Andromeda: Identity, Please
by Mathen Nors
Summary: Beka tries to install a new AI on the Eureka Maru, and gets more than she bargained for. Trance decides to help Harper with one of his new experiments. When things go drastically wrong, she learns what it's like to be Harper for a day.
1. The Next Score

Author's Notes: This is my first serious attempt at an Andromeda fanfic, so it will likely be a little rough around the edges. It would also be good to note that I'm writing this after only having seen through Season 2. Therefore, a lot of my information may be out of date for those of you who have seen through Season 4. Also, some of my spelling is going to be off; despite my best efforts, I haven't found spellings for a lot of the more technical words. If anyone knows, please do mention them in your reviews. Thanks.

**Andromeda: Identity, Please**

"Of all the questions in the Universe,

Perhaps the most important is this:

Who am I?"

Magog Wayist Reverend Behemiel,

_Ways of the Divine_, C.Y. 10067

"Beka, remember what happened to us last time we went looking for an abandoned High Guard warship?" Dylan Hunt asked, trying to keep a disbelieving grin off his face and largely failing.

"We got attacked by insane androids," Beka Valentine answered. "Trust me, I remember. They nearly made mincemeat out of the _Maru._ But it'll be different this time."

"And how can you be so sure of that?" the Captain returned. "Have you spoken with Trance about it, or what? Because merely promising me that it'll be different the second time around isn't going to convince me to put this ship or my crew at risk like that again."

Beka put her fists on her hips, trying not to loose her patience. "No, I haven't spoken with Trance. In fact, I'm trying not to let her in on this until later. Besides, she wants to go with Harper to Ciinti to work on one of his experiments in cooperation with the Perseids."

"You haven't spoken with her because you know what she'll say." Dylan turned and started down the corridor again, bound for command. "And frankly, I'd have to agree with her. The risk is too great, and the potential rewards aren't worth that risk. I'm sorry, Beka, but it's too dangerous."

"Okay, there are two major differences between this job and the one on the _Pax Magellanic_," Beka raised her voice as she hurried after Dylan. Even at a near jog, she couldn't quite match his pace. It was the pace he used when he was finished talking about something. "One, the _Pax_ was a Heavy Cruiser, like the _Andromeda_. The _Valkyrie Hammer_ is a frigate; it's much smaller, with far fewer armaments. It wouldn't be a match for the Andromeda, even _if_ it were operational. And that brings me to my second point. A contact of mine says he's been on board the _Valkyrie_. It's pretty much torn to shreds; there's nothing left on board that would present a threat to us."

Dylan stopped and turned to face Beka. "And how reliable is this contact of yours?"

Beka looked insulted that he would ask such a thing. "Reliable enough that I've used him for the past five years without any problems."

"And he isn't, by chance, a Nightsider, is he?"

She didn't miss the jibe in that one, and grinned a bit in spite of herself. "No, he's a Perseid actually. You know how skittish they are. If _he_ thought the _Valkyrie_ was safe enough to board, it'll be a piece of cake for us."

Dylan gave an exasperated snort. "Where have I heard that one before?" He started walking again, leaving Beka scurrying after him. "I'm still not convinced. Maybe – just maybe – we'll check it out after we're done with our review of the new Mobius defense corps. But right now, I've got more important things to worry about."

"Come on, Dylan," Beka started again. "Don't you want to know what happened to her? She was destroyed in combat, that's what all the damage is from. And my contact says she was operational less then three years ago."

That stopped Dylan in his tracks. He turned to face Beka again. "Three years ago? But that would be –"

"About the same time my crew and I pulled you out of the black hole," she finished for him. "I know, and that's the strange part about all this. Someone was using her up until three years ago, and then she was finally put out of commission – permanently. Personally, I'd like to know whether it was High Guard manning her, or someone else. And I'd like to know why she was attacked."

Dylan exhaled slowly, his eyes distant. "Yeah, so would I," he said softly. "So would I." He was silent a moment longer before snapping back to the present. "All right, we'll go take a look. But we've only got a few days until we're supposed to be at Mobius. And," he went on, pointing a finger at Beka, "if anything goes wrong, I'm blaming you." He started back toward command.

Beka held up her hands. "Right, fine," she said after him. "Won't be the first time."


	2. Arrival

"Captain," the voice of _Andromeda Ascendant's _AI came over the comm., "we're approaching the Myriad system."

"Transiting back to normal space... now." Beka braced herself against the pilot's headrest as the deck began vibrating beneath her. With a brilliant flash of white light and the roar of her engines, the High Guard warship exited the slipstream and entered normal space at cruising speed. Beka let go of the controls as the headrest slid back, and flexed her hands. "That exit was one of the more interesting ones I've tried," she commented dryly.

Dylan let go of the railing of his command station as the deck steadied beneath him, and nodded toward the main viewscreen, which was displaying a composite sensor image of the system they had just entered. "Probably because of all those asteroids out there," he replied. "That must be how the system got its name. There's got to be thousands of them scattered around out there."

"Two hundred thousand, six hundred, seventy-three, to be exact," Andromeda's AI corrected as her image appeared on one of the secondary viewers. "And at least half of them are as big or bigger than I am. The brown dwarf at the core of this system doesn't have enough gravitational pull to arrange them into a predictable orbit this far out; I recommend no more than half speed."

"You heard the lady, Beka," Dylan said. "Half speed ahead."

"Half speed, aye," Beka replied as she grinned mockingly.

"Mr. Anasazi, if you would be so kind as to deploy a full spread of sensor drones, we can start looking for our lost friend."

"Deploying sensor drones," Tyr Anasazi echoed from his tactical station. "Remind me again why we're wasting all this time looking for the ruined hulk of a three-hundred year old warship?"

"Not just any warship, Tyr," Dylan corrected. "A High Guard frigate. Granted, frigates weren't nearly as dangerous as Heavy Cruisers like _Andromeda_, but they were still formidable opponents."

"Why, thank you, Captain," _Andromeda's _holographic avatar chimed as she materialized next to Dylan. "_Golden Dawn_-class frigates like the _Valkyrie Hammer_ only had about half as many missile tubes and gun ports as I do, but their point-defense systems were notoriously efficient, which made them much harder to kill than comparably sized Nietzschean vessels. As a result, frigates could make devastating attack runs against larger fleets, and still come out intact. They could also field a wing of four slipfighters, which allowed them to make a nuisance of themselves even at long range."

"Besides, Tyr," Beka interrupted, "my contact says that the _Valkyrie_ isn't completely ruined. There might still be useful things we can pull out of her. Spare parts, unused missiles, maybe even some PDL ports."

Tyr didn't look convinced, but as his control panel started beeping, he glanced down at it. "Well, then," he said slowly, "you'll be happy to know that our sensor drones have detected an object that appears to match the size of a High Guard frigate. It's approximately two light minutes out, closer to the sun."

"I've got it," Andromeda's on-screen avatar said. "It's definitely a ship of some sort. I'm not reading any power signatures; it's completely dead in space."

"Beka?" Dylan prompted.

"Already on it," she replied.

"Rommie, go get the _Maru_ prepped," Dylan ordered. "I want to keep _Andromeda_ back until we know for sure what we're dealing with."

_Andromeda's_ android avatar nodded and left the command deck, bound for the hanger bay.

"Just so everyone is clear on this," Dylan continued, "our first order of business is to find out who was using the _Valkyrie_ up until three years ago, and what they were using her for. No one starts scavenging parts until I say so, understood?" He glanced at Beka pointedly, waiting until she grimaced and nodded before he looked back to the display screens. "Tyr, I want you to stay here and hold down the fort."

"Not exactly an exciting job," the Nietzschean muttered, "but better than tramping around inside a dead relic."

"If something goes wrong onboard the _Valkyrie_, I expect you to show up with the cavalry," Dylan said to him. "Think you can handle that?"

Tyr just cocked his head to one side, raised an eyebrow, and gave that little half shrug of his.

"I thought so," Dylan replied with a small grin. He stepped down off his command station's platform and started for the doors. "Beka, let's go."


	3. Harper, Trance, and Way Too Many Perseid...

"I mean, it's all well and good that the chinheads are letting us borrow some of their equipment and facilities and all that," Seamus Harper began for what must have been the twentieth time, "but come on, I can build this thing myself, _without_ their overeager help."

Trance Gemini sighed in exasperation as she followed close behind Harper down the sterile looking white hall. "I'm sure you could, Harper, but remember that they were instrumental in helping you last time you tried to build it, and Technical Director Hoon died because of it. Besides, if they're willing to let you test out your theories – which are dangerous, to say the least – on one of their worlds and in their own facilities, the least you can do in return is let them look over your shoulder while you do it."

"Yeah, except looking turns into asking, and asking turns into prodding, and prodding turns into meddling, and meddling turns into a major disaster that'll get us all killed," Harper retorted, throwing up his hands.

"If it's that dangerous, do you really think you should be working with it again?" Trance asked simply.

The engineer stopped and turned to face her. "Look, Trance, I understand your concerns. I really do. I mean, last time I started building it, it turned the Andromeda into one big megamaze between past, present, and future. _And_ you switched places with Trance. I mean the _other_ Trance," he started to add, but it was too late.

A look of what might have been hurt flashed briefly across her face. "You still don't trust me entirely, do you?" she asked.  
"No... it's not that," he said lamely, looking away from her intense gaze as he tried to come up with an excuse. "It's just... I'm still trying to get used to it, that's all. The switch I mean."

She nodded, but didn't look convinced.

"What I'm trying to say is," he hurried on to change the subject, "I know it's dangerous. But I've done a lot of research since last time. I've gone over my blueprints, and I've almost memorized Hoon's notes on the thing, just from reading them so many times. And I think I've come up with a way to make it more stable, so that we won't get teseract events all over the planet."

"And what would that way be?" she prompted.

Harper gave her that quirky smile, the one that made most women grin foolishly back at him. Trance didn't so much as blink. He sighed. "Come on, I'll show you."

It wasn't a long walk to the lab rooms that had been set aside for Harper, his experiment, and everyone that would be working with him. Which turned out to be a lot of people. The All Systems University Laboratory Headquarters was a huge complex nearly the size of a small city, and although Harper's teseract generator experiments only required two or three rooms and a fair-sized generator, it seemed that half the Headquarters' personnel were crowded into them.

"Oh, come on," Harper whined as he pushed through the doorway into a crowd of people. "How am I supposed to get any work done with this many chinheads – I mean Perseids – wandering around and getting in my way?"

Trance just raised her eyebrows when she saw all the people.

"Oh, Mr. Harper!" a voice that was annoyingly high-pitched for being male shouted from across the room. "Mr. Harper! Oh, excuse me, terrible sorry, excuse me. Mr. Harper!"

The two turned to see a particularly tall Perseid wading through the crowd toward them.

"Here we go already," Harper muttered to Trance as the alien arrived before them.

The blue-skinned Perseid gave a short bow, his black cap nearly falling off his bald head as he did so. "Mr. Harper, allow me to introduce myself," he babbled far too ecstatically for Harper's quickly souring mood. "I am Professor Deedran, head of the teseract research team here on Ciinti."

"Uh, yeah, pleased to meet you," Harper managed to sound dubiously cheerful as he found his hand being all but forcibly shaken.

Deedran seemed to notice Trance for the first time, and offered another bow, after which he released Harper's hand only to take hers and shake it up and down hard enough to make her red braids of hair bounce. "I'm afraid I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you before," he went on almost without taking a breath. "I am Professor Deedran, head of the teseract research team here on Ciinti."

Despite the fact that her hand was almost certainly beginning to ache, Trance gave a graceful smile. "Trance Gemini," she replied. "I'm a friend of Harper's. I'll be helping him during his experiment."

"Wonderful! Wonderful!" Deedran exclaimed, still shaking her hand.

"I wasn't aware that Ciinti had a teseract research team," she continued before Deedran could say anything more. "I assume it's newly formed?"

Finally, Deedran let go of her hand and grinned, showing teeth that seemed extremely white against his dark blue complexion. "That would be a very clever assumption, Trance Gemini," he said. "After the events of the past few months and Technical Director Hoon's tragic... demise... onboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_, the All Systems University decided it would be a good idea to have a permanent team in place to study the effects of teseract events, and their possible uses in the near future. This will be the first chance the team gets to put some of their theories to work."

"Great," Harper said with mock enthusiasm. "So where's this team?"

"Why, you're looking at them!" Deedran bubbled. "The entire team is here, and they are all very excited to get to work as soon as you're ready!"

"Whoa, whoa, wait," Harper exclaimed, holding up his hands. "Hold on for just a nanosecond, my finely chinned friend! Are you saying that _everyone_ here is part of the teseract research team? Half the University's personnel on Ciinti must be here!"

"Actually, only about a tenth," Deedran corrected helpfully, holding up his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.

"But what about their other projects?" Trance asked in slight confusion. "Surely some of them were working on important research. Did they just abandon it to join the teseract team?"

"Why, yes," Deedran answered as if he were explaining the obvious to a person of slightly-below-average intelligence. "When we heard that Mr. Harper was coming here to work on his famous teseract project, nearly everyone in the entire University wanted to be a part of the team that would work with him. There were so many that, in the end, the board of directors had to turn some of the applicants away."

"Not _all_ that many, apparently," Harper muttered in disbelief as he surveyed the room once again. Most of the occupants were Perseid, with a few members of other species scattered among them. All of them were talking animatedly, waving their arms about or pointing to flexisheets filled with rotating diagrams or row upon row of notes. More than one seemed to be trying to make their way toward him, which was definitely not a good thing in his opinion.

"Are they all going to be here while we work?" Trance asked, the tone of her voice hinting that she already knew the answer, and didn't like it.

"Oh, but of course," Deedran replied. "They would be heartbroken if we asked them to leave, and besides, I doubt the security systems in these rooms are good enough to keep all of them out." He started nodding furiously and grinned as if he had made some sort of joke.

"Well, what can I say?" Harper shrugged as he turned to Trance. "The Perseids love their science. What d'ya say we get this show on the road and see what happens, huh?"

Trance just looked at him for a moment, then gave a small, knowing smile and nodded once. "Let's get started."


	4. The Valkyrie Hammer

"Well, we're approaching the location of the ship that Andromeda's sensors picked up," Beka said over her shoulder as she piloted the _Eureka Maru_. "But I don't see anything yet."

"It's there," Rommie said from the Maru's sensor station. "My sensors are still reading it." She closed her eyes, as if taking a moment to process the information that her shipboard AI was sending her. "It's on the other side of that asteroid," she said finally, raising an arm to point at a large, slowly rotating mountain of stone that floated straight ahead.

"Any idea yet if it is, in fact, the _Valkyrie Hammer_?" Dylan asked from where he stood next to Rommie.

"I'm not certain," the android replied. "It's definitely a frigate, and she appears to be a modified _Golden Dawn_-class, but all of her systems are down; she's not transmitting any sort of identification or even energy emissions that would allow me to make a positive ID."

"We'll know soon enough," Beka added. "We're almost over that asteroid." She gently throttled back on the freighter's engines as they approached the rocky, uneven horizon of the giant boulder.

At first, there was nothing to be seen except more space filled with whirling, careening asteroids. Then, first once, then twice, something flashed brilliantly in the light of the distant brown dwarf star.

"There!" Dylan exclaimed. "What was that?"

Without needing to hear an order, Beka directed the _Maru_ toward the flash. As they approached, whatever it was continued to reflect the light of the sun, twinkling as if it were rotating or spinning.

"I believe that would be the ship," Rommie replied finally. "The _Maru's_ sensors aren't as good as mine, but I should have a composite image in a few seconds." She ignored Beka's pointed glare at the comment as her fingers danced over the display screens in front of her. "Bringing up an image now."

She touched one last button, and an image of a vessel appeared on one of the screens. Dylan crouched next to her to study it. "Well, it's certainly High Guard, or was," he murmured. "I recognize the hull style. But her specific configuration is different from any other _Golden Dawn_-class that I remember. She's got more missile ports and an entire extra bank of PDLs." He whistled. "Check out those engine modifications. She would have been almost as fast as you, Rommie."

"That's definitely not standard High Guard configuration," Rommie added. "I don't recognize her; she must have been commissioned after our run-in with the black hole at Ephestus. But her specs match the one that Beka's informant supplied. It's the _Valkyrie Hammer_."

"Is there anything in the vicinity that would prevent us from reaching her safely?" Dylan asked.

"I'm not detecting any sort of hazards, natural or otherwise, in her immediate vicinity. If her hangar is empty, we might be able to land the _Maru_ inside, but it would be a tight fit."

"Hey, I'm up to the challenge," Beka piped. "Just give the word, boss."

Dylan gave a small smile at that. "All right, take us in."

Beka increased the Maru's speed, and gradually, the flashing object grew closer and larger. Soon, it took on the shape of a ship. Even though it had been High Guard, it looked nothing like the _Andromeda Ascendant_. The _Valkyrie Hammer_ was long and slender, sculpted with fluid curves and flowing, rounded edges. Her length was studded with missile ports and point defense laser systems, along with antennae for enhanced sensor systems. Starting at the lower aft section of the ship were several long protrusions that curved forward, out, and down, ending in sharp points that resembled talons. With four on each side, they looked to be weapons systems of some sort. At the far aft end of the ship were her engines. The hull plating over them was discolored, as if they were of a different material from the rest of the ship, and they looked almost too big in proportion to the rest of the hull.

"She's pretty," Beka commented. "If you can call Death incarnate pretty."

"She was definitely made for killing," Dylan replied, his voice distant as he studied the ship, which was slowly growing larger as they approached. "They've moved her hangar bay. It's not on the upper hull like it should be."

"I'm reading a hangar-sized opening on the lower hull," Rommie supplied. "Between those... blades."

"Let's go take a look," Beka added. Twisting the control sticks in her hands, she put the _Maru_ into a slow, rolling dive. Moments later, the lower portion of the ship came into view, and the hangar of the _Valkyrie Hammer_ was framed by the _Maru's_ cockpit viewport. Beka reached overhead to flip a pair of switches, and powerful white lights streamed out from the _Maru_ to probe the black depths of the hangar. "Looks like it's empty. I'm taking us in."

"Nice and slow," Dylan urged.

"Hey, no backseat piloting," she muttered as she manipulated the controls with careful movements.

Under her expert guidance, the battered freighter slipped slowly forward between the extended blades on either side, until its nose was hovering just in front of the hangar opening. Beka brought the ship to a halt, made another sweep with the lights, then started forward again. The _Maru's_ engines hummed with power that begged to be released, but Beka knew better than to let her ship have its way in this particular situation. Gritting her teeth in concentration, she edged the ship forward a bit more.

"Beka, I'm not sure that –" Rommie began.

"I got it," Beka cut her off softly. "Just sit tight; I got it."

The _Maru_ continued forward, centimeter by perilous centimeter. The rear wall of the hangar loomed out of the darkness, but Beka didn't brake the ship until the cockpit was a mere meter from it. Finally, she hit the thrusters and set the _Maru_ down on the hangar deck with a dull thud. Breathing a soft sight of relief, she unfastened her safety harness, then stood and turned to face Dylan and Rommie.

"See, I told ya," she piped.

Dylan grinned while trying to inconspicuously wipe sweat from his forehead. "Good work, Beka. I knew we could count on you."

Beka saw him and chuckled. "Mmm-hmm, sure you did."

"Rommie, how's the atmosphere outside the _Maru_?" Dylan asked, changing the subject before Beka could get any more jibes in.

"Nonexistent," the android replied. "The hangar's magnetic field has failed; it's open vacuum out there. I can't be sure of the rest of the ship, but we'll need EV suits for the first part of our field trip, anyway."

"You _did_ have Harper fix the EV suits?" Dylan asked, looking to Beka.

"Yeah, he finally got around to it," she replied. "I think I've got four of them fully functional onboard now."

"Right, let's get suited up."


	5. Oops

"How's that?" Trance asked.

"There, that's it," Harper replied. "Hold it right there." His face a grimace of concentration, the engineer powered up his hand welder and started fusing the piece of metal Trance was holding into place. He lowered his voice before speaking again, making sure the sound of his welder would let only Trance hear him. "How we doin'?"

The golden-skinned alien glanced over her shoulder. "Another one just left," she answered softly. "We're down to half a dozen."

"And Deedran?"

"Still here."

"Blast. I was hoping to get rid of that particular overly excitable chinhead, but I guess he's got more patience than I have time for. We need to get started."

"At least we know the ones that are still here are truly interested in your experiment," Trance commented. "They should be of some help."

"Yeah, well, we can hope. I just wish that my little ploy to get rid of the disinterested ones had gotten rid of a few more." Harper shut off his welder and stepped back to survey his handiwork. In actuality, the small structure he and Trance had just constructed served no real purpose, except to waste time while they tried to thin out the herd of babbling scientists who wanted to be in on the teseract experiment. "There," he said loudly. "That should do it. Well, Professor Deedran, esteemed fellow scientists, I do believe that we are ready to get this show on the road."

"Oh, most excellent, Mr. Harper!" Deedran exclaimed, with far more enthusiasm than Harper had hoped he would be feeling. "My assistants and I are as ready as ever to help you!"

"That's what I was afraid of," Harper muttered to Trance as he brushed past her to head off the Perseid scientists as they swarmed toward him. "Great, great!" he said out loud. "That's wonderful! Okay, first, let's find out a bit about each other. How many of you here have done any sort of successful experiments with teseracts?"

Professor Deedran raised his hand and all but started bouncing excitedly, and one of the others half raised his and looked dubious.

Harper tried not to choke in dismay, even as he struggled to keep grinning. "Well, uh... that's great! That's wonderful! Um, you," he pointed to the dubious fellow, "what did your experiment involve?"

"Well, uh, I was trying to determine how to phase shift living biological organisms in and out of normal space," he began slowly, kneading his hands uncertainly. "I learned many useful things, but um, well, I'm not sure I would call it a complete success." He ended with several quick nods and nervous grin.

"Good, good," Harper encouraged him. "But what do you mean you wouldn't call it a complete success?"

"Um, well, hehe, I was using my son's _terka_ bird as a test subject, and um..." He trailed off, still rubbing his hands.

"Yes, and?" Trance prompted, her voice curious.

"Well, uh, I blew it up."

Harper smirked and gave Trance his 'what-did-I-tell-you' look. Trance just rolled her eyes.

"That's great, that's great," Harper replied. "You learned not to use live subjects until you've tested out nonliving ones, good."

The Perseid nodded gratefully and gave a relieved chuckle. "Ha-ha, yes."

"Oh, oh, don't you want to hear about my experiment, Mr. Harper?" Deedran asked as Harper started to turn back toward the table with his _real_ experiment on it.

The engineer put his arm around the Perseid's shoulder in a friendly manner. "I'd love to, Prof, but I'm afraid we don't have that kinda time. I'll just have to take your word for it. Now, if you wouldn't mind sending one of your nice little friends over there to check on our generator and make sure it's working properly, we can get down to business."

Deedran did a good job of looking both disappointed and eccentrically eager at the same time, but nodded readily. "Of course, of course!" He straightened from listening to Harper and turned to wave at one of his female assistants. "Assistant Professor, would you please go check on Mr. Harper's generator to ensure that it is functioning at peak efficiency?"

The Assistant Professor grinned widely and hurried toward one of the side doors, apparently excited just to be moving.

"Now what?" Deedran asked.

"Now," Harper replied as he started checking over the machine that sat on the table, "make sure you and your fellow scientists are ready to observe and take notes. First, we're gonna make sure that this thing can actually be turned on without causing any unwanted teseract events. Once we're sure it's safe, that's when the real fun begins."

Deedran nodded excitedly, and went to repeat to his fellows what Harper had said, even though they had obviously already heard him.

"This looks just like the teseract generator we used onboard the _Andromeda_," Trance said, lowering her voice as she spoke to the engineer. "I thought you said you had made modifications to it."

"I did," Harper replied. "Take a look at this photonic resonator. I've completely redesigned it so that it will have more control over the teseract energy that this thing will create. It's got more circuit connections, and an improved networking capability, which will allow it to siphon off any unwanted extra energy that we end up with. Plus," he went on proudly, holding up what looked like a remote control, "I've rigged our generator so that it can be shut down with a touch of this big red button here. If anything goes wrong, I can shut it down in the matter of a second."

"I... see," Trance muttered. She didn't look convinced. "But will shutting it down stop any unwanted teseract events?"

"Ah, see, that's also one of my modifications. When Hoon, Raquim, and I worked on the first version of this puppy, we had certain components of it powered up. That meant when it was completed, it would already be turned on and ready to rumba. But this one I've kept powered down until it was complete. That means that no matter what mistakes I will make in the future, it can't do anything, because it ain't turned on yet."

"I'm not sure I get it."

Harper shrugged. "Yeah, well, it's one of those future, past, present paradox things. If you really wanna know the details, I'm sure Deedran over there would be more than happy to explain it to you."

Trance's eyes grew wide. "I... think I'll pass on that," she replied.

"Look, don't worry," Harper assured her. "Everything's taken care of. If something goes wrong, I'll just turn it off and everything will be fine."

Trance crossed her arms over her chest. "If you say so."

The engineer rolled his eyes and spread his arms in exasperation. "Trust the Harper; the Harper is good."

"Where have I heard _that_ before?"

"Never mind. Look, no one's making you stay here. If you want to leave, feel free. You can take a shuttle to Sonoma-Kora Drift and wait for me there if it'll make you feel better."

Trance just cocked her head to one side and gave him the 'I'm-not-going-anywhere' look.

He grinned. "I thought so. Just watch, and be amazed." He turned back to Deedran and his companions. "Is the generator ready?"

"Fully functional and ready to begin," the Professor reported.

"All right. Let's rock." Harper pulled his goggles over his eyes, as if they would provide any protection against teseract radiation, and began connecting wires and cables. Pulling one of his datapads out of his shirt pocket, he punched in a sequence of commands. Gradually, the conical-shaped teseract device on the table started to light up, making little whirs and clicks as it powered up. "That's right, sing for me baby," he murmured as he concentrated.

A series of collective ohs and ahs rose from the gathered Perseids. Harper didn't allow himself to be distracted, but kept working. Trance stood still as a stone, her green eyes fixed on the machine as its lights grew brighter. Suddenly, she gasped.

That made Harper look up. "Trance? You okay?"

After a moment, she looked up to meet his worried gaze. "We're not going to be in a moment," she said, even as she turned toward the Perseids. "Professor, get your people out of here, now! Get as far away from this room as you can!" The aliens gaped at her for a moment. "Do it! Now!" she all but yelled.

The tone of her voice made the Perseids scramble for the door.

"Trance, what's wrong?" Harper asked.

"Harper, shut it down!" she commanded. "Something really bad is about to happen!"

"Um, okay, sure." He reached for his shutdown remote, and pressed the button. Nothing happened. The generator continued to power up.

"Shut it down, Harper!" Trance repeated.

In the next room, a low boom resounded, echoing through the entire lab complex.

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" Harper exclaimed. He slammed his fist on the button repeatedly. "It's not working! The generator must be on overload!"

"Is there any way we can stop it?" she yelled over the growing roar of pent up power.

"I'll have to shut it off manually!" he shouted back. "You'd better make a run for it, Trance! I'll follow as soon as I shut it off!"

"I'm not going anywhere!" Trance replied. "I can help!"

Harper didn't bother to argue with her. He knew he didn't have the time. He had to get the generator that was powering his teseract machine shut down, before it exploded – or worse. But even as he turned for the door to the other room, another explosion rocked the lab, and the door started to buckle inward. Smoke and sparks boiled around the edges. "I guess that rules that option out," he said as he backed away from it.

Trance looked around the room desperately, trying to figure out some way to stop the power up process. Her eyes fell on one of the metal bars they had been using to build Harper's fake project. Immediately, she knew what she had to do. She grabbed it with both hands, turned toward the teseract generator – which by now was glowing almost as brightly as a miniature sun – and raised the makeshift weapon above her head.

"Trance, no!" Harper exclaimed. He started toward her, even while realizing there was no way he could reach her in time.

But her blow never had time to fall.

A blinding blue-white flash filled the room, accompanied by an ear shattering crackling sound. Time seemed to stand still as Trance fell backward, the metal bar spinning out of her hands in slow motion. Harper found himself floating in midair from where he had jumped toward her, trying to push her away from the machine. Gradually, he became aware that he was screaming; so was Trance. It felt like his insides were being ripped out of his skin, like his skull was going to explode from the pressure.

Another explosion rocked the facility, this one larger than any of the others. The lights died even as shards of debris rained down about them.

Dimly, Harper realized he was falling, or at least his body was. He watched himself hit the floor, but couldn't feel it. He saw Trance fly backward into another table, saw the back of her head slam against the edge. That was when he felt the pain.

As blackness finally took him, one thought rang through his mind. _This is so not good._


	6. Aftermath

Author's Notes: Just thought I would warn you in advance that this chapter is rather long. I apologize, but I'm sure you know how it goes when the inspiration kicks into high gear.

**Chapter Six: Aftermath**

"What's so funny?" Beka asked as Dylan laughed softly.

"Rommie," the Captain replied. When the android looked up at him quizzically, he hurried to explain. "I mean, Beka and I are suited up in so much protective gear that a nova couldn't get to us, and you're walking around out here in the cold and vacuum of space with nothing but your uniform on."

Rommie shrugged. "Yes, well, not having to breathe does have its benefits every now and then."

"So does not feeling cold," Beka added. "My sensors are saying it's absolutely frigid in here."

"Oh, I can feel it," Rommie said. "It just doesn't affect me like it would you or Dylan."

"Yeah, I don't care what anybody else says, Rommie," Dylan piped, "I think you're pretty useful to have around."

Rommie just rolled her eyes.

"Well, doesn't look like there's anything of much use here in the hangar bay," Beka changed the subject as she studied the datapad in her hand. "The slipfighters are obviously gone, and I don't see any other equipment, except for some spent fuel cells over in the corner there. If there's anything still intact, it'll be farther into the ship."

"We should head for the command deck," Dylan suggested. "If there's any information on what happened to her and her crew, it'll be there."

"I'll take point," Beka volunteered. She started toward the main corridor that led from the hangar, with Dylan and Rommie close behind.

The ship was entirely dark; the only illumination came from the lights in Dylan's and Beka's EV suit helmets. Shadows played and danced along the walls of the corridor they entered, giving the whole place a decidedly sinister feel. Small pieces of debris floated about, sometimes bumping into the walls or against the sides of their helmets. The ship had no gravity whatsoever; the only thing that kept the three from floating were the magnetic clamps in their boots. Scorch marks streaked the walls of the corridor, and in some places, holes opened up into dark places beyond, which their lights could not illuminate.

"This is really creepy," Beka whispered softly over their comm units. "It's like finding the _Andromeda_ all over again, only no lights and no AG."

"And no crew," Dylan added. He stopped as they started to pass what had been a door into another compartment. A huge hole had been blasted through the center of it; the ragged edges of metal had been warped and melted by something. He ran a gloved hand along it. "This is battle damage," he said. "Whatever made this hole was pretty powerful."

"You think the _Valkyrie_ was boarded?" Rommie asked.

"How else would an interior door end up like this?" Dylan replied. "And these scorch marks. Some of them are from force lances. Whoever destroyed the _Valkyrie Hammer_ didn't just want the ship dead. They wanted something that was _on_ the ship, as well. Beka, did your contact mention anything about finding dead crewmembers while he was here?"

Beka shook her head inside her EV helmet. "No, he didn't. He was more interested in getting hold of her astronomical data, but I thought it was odd he didn't say anything about coming across some bodies."

"Most of them probably ended up in space," Rommie supplied. "I'm detecting at least sixteen different hull breaches ship wide. Most of the interior would have been exposed to open space."

"But wouldn't emergency bulkheads have sealed those off?" Dylan asked.

"Not if there was a system-wide failure."

"I guess we'll find out," Beka said. She fell silent for a moment as she studied the schematics on her datapad. "Come on, I think command is this way." She started off down the corridor, then took a left turn at the next one.

They ascended a pair of ladders onto higher decks, then followed Beka down another set of passages. All along the way, there were signs of extensive fighting: scorch marks on walls, ceilings, and decks; holes blasted through doors or bulkheads; chunks of metal and wires floating aimlessly about.

"Looks like the crew put up quite a fight," Rommie said.

"Sounds a lot like High Guard," Dylan agreed. "They would have resisted every step of the way."

"Too bad it didn't do them any good," Beka commented from ahead of them. They glanced up toward her voice. "I think I just found command," she added slowly.

Directly in front of them was a large set of double doors. The metal doors themselves had been blown away, lying in twisted ruin in the corridor. Beyond was a room that Dylan recognized as a High Guard command center. Or at least part of one. The entire far side of the chamber was missing. Instead of bulkheads and viewscreens, there was only open space and the stars beyond.

Trying not to feel sick, trying not to imagine what had happened to any crewmembers that had still been in here when the explosion happened, Dylan stepped through the doors onto the command deck. "I'm beginning to wonder if we'll find anything left intact at all," he breathed. "Whoever attacked the _Valkyrie Hammer_ did a pretty good job of messing things up."

"This might explain the lack of emergency bulkheads," Rommie said as she followed Dylan into command. "If the AI got fried by one of these explosions, the emergency backup systems might not have had time to respond. Especially if the breaches were simultaneous."

"Hey, I think this terminal is still working," Beka said from behind them. They turned to see her studying a station not far from the ruined doors. Its screens were cracked and scorched, but it otherwise seemed intact. "It's got no power, but one of our extra battery cells should do the trick."

"Rommie, see to it," Dylan ordered. "I just want to take a look out here..." His voice trailed off as he walked toward the massive hole that looked out into space. He stopped a few feet from the edge, and looked down to see the length of the frigate spread out beneath him. It was a good twenty-meter drop from the command tower to the next deck below. Getting a good grip on a protruding piece of metal with one hand, he leaned forward into empty space and looked around. "Wow," he breathed. "Up close, you can really see the battle damage. The _Valkyrie_ took a beating."

Beka stepped up next to him. "Somebody had a grudge to settle," she commented. "Looks like some of this damage was created after she was disabled."

"Yeah, well, in this universe, simply being High Guard is enough for most people to want you dead," Dylan replied. "But I would like to know what she was doing when whoever did this caught up with her. They wanted something from her, else they wouldn't have boarded."

"Captain," Rommie said from behind them. "I've gotten power restored to the terminal. I was right. The AI has been fried. If we're going to get any information out of her memory cores, I'm going to have to go in and get it myself."

Dylan and Beka joined her at the terminal. It was lit up, flickering every now and then, and without an AI to direct it, its screen was a blank blue.

"Just be careful," Dylan warned her. "Make sure there's no hostile programming in there before you try to access it."

"Understood," Rommie replied. "Just give me a moment." Placing her hand on the access pad next to the screen, she closed her eyes and went still and silent. It took more than a moment. For nearly a minute, she didn't move or make a sound. Finally, she removed her hand from the pad and opened her eyes slowly. "There's nothing there," she said.

"What?" asked Dylan. "What do you mean there's nothing there?"

"Everything's been erased. The AI, her memory core, backup programming, basic ship functions, everything. There's not a scrap of data left in there."

"That's why they came on board," Beka said suddenly. "They didn't want anybody who might find the _Valkyrie_ later to know who they were, or why they wanted her and her crew dead."

"Or what she was doing when they found her," Dylan added softly. "This is beginning to get a lot more complicated that I had planned for."

"Dylan, remember after we found the _Pax Magellanic_ and I told you to throw me in the brig if I ever mentioned going after another High Guard ship?" Beka asked.

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you do it this time?"

He shrugged. "Because, like you, I'm too curious for my own good."

She nodded. "Yeah, that's what I was afraid of."

"So I take it we're not done here," Rommie put in. "I'm all for finding out what happened, but I don't know where else we would look. Whoever attacked the _Valkyrie_ did a thorough job."

"Let's head deeper into the ship," Dylan suggested. "Who knows; we might find something."

"I'm beginning to wish I had brought Trance along after all," Beka muttered. "She would know where to look."

The three carefully made their way out of command, and started in the opposite direction of the one they had come from. Away from the light of the stars and the system's brown dwarf, the interior of the ship started to get very dark again. No matter how high he turned up the intensity of his lights, it seemed to Dylan that he could never see more than a few feet ahead. Strangely, he found himself hoping that all of the crew had died before the ship lost power; it would have been a terrible way to die, alone in this utter dark, being hunted by a ruthless enemy.

He led the other two down several different corridors. As they went, they poked their heads into various compartments and rooms. Everywhere, it was the same. Everything of any use had been taken or destroyed. It seemed that the fighting had raged everywhere. Almost every bulkhead and door had battle damage. In some places, massive explosions had torn through decks and ceilings to create gaping holes that spanned several levels of the ship. They carefully made their way around these, sometimes forced to backtrack and find another route.

Finally, they found their way blocked by a large set of double doors. They had been scorched and burned until they were almost solid black, but they held firm.

"This is what I was looking for," Dylan said as he played his lights over it.

"The slipstream core," Beka breathed. "Of course. If anyone survived to make a last stand, this is where they would have gone."

"Looks like the intruders tried to get through here," Rommie said, "but I don't think they were successful."

"Any way you can get these doors open, Rommie?" Dylan asked.

The android set her case of spare battery cells and other equipment down next to an access panel. "Just give me a second." She pried the panel off and started pushing aside wires and tubing. She pulled out a cylindrical part and tossed it aside, then pulled a battery out of her case and snapped it into place. She crossed half a dozen different wires, and, as sparks flew briefly, the doors started to grind open. They stopped after moving only a meter or so. "That's the best I can do," she said. "The bulkheads to either side are warped from the heat of the attack. That's as far as they'll go."

"Good enough," Dylan said. Turning his lights up as high as they would go, he started into the dark slipstream core. Beka and Rommie were close behind. He stopped just inside and looked carefully around, using his lights to try to find a safe route.

To their left, the catwalk that led to the main control center of the core and been blown away. The one to their right seemed shaky, but it held when Dylan stepped carefully onto it. As he advanced out over empty space, he couldn't see the long drop below him, or the vast maw above him, but he could feel it. It was almost as bad as staring into a black hole. Overhead, he could sense the massive bulk of the generator arms that would have powered the frigate's slipstream core. They were cold and silent now.

He reached the main catwalk and started toward the control station that he knew would be near the middle. Behind him, Beka started onto the first catwalk, unwilling to try her weight combined with Dylan's at the same time. Rommie stayed near the doors, as if standing guard.

Dylan had almost reached the control station when he stopped suddenly. He crouched a bit, trying to get his lights to focus better on what he had seen. "Uh, ladies?" he said slowly.

The catwalk shifted with a creak as Beka approached from behind. "What is it? What do you see?"

He didn't turn toward her, but ran his lights along the length of the leg sticking out from behind the control center. "I think I just found one of the crewmembers."

Beka winced inside her helmet. "Or what's left of one, anyway."

"Stay here; I'm gonna take a closer look."

"Yeah, right," Beka retorted. "What do you think I am, a wuss?" She started after him.

Dylan didn't answer; all of his attention was focused on the body ahead. As they neared, he could see it was a Human female. She was wearing a scorched and tattered High Guard officer's uniform, and gripped in one lifeless fist was a fully extended force lance. However she had ended up dying, it was obvious she had been in the thick of the fighting.

"The Captain?" Beka asked, her voice breaking into his thoughts.

"Could be," Dylan replied as he crouched next to the body. "I don't see any kind of rank insignia. The atmosphere in here must have been lost shortly after she died. Her body's perfectly preserved."

The catwalk shook slightly as Rommie started toward them, but the two Humans didn't look up.

Beka knelt on the opposite side of the body, leaning over it face as she studied it. "It doesn't show any signs of decompression. I'd say she suffocated in here."

Dylan bit back a curse. "They couldn't get at her with a direct assault, so they overrode life support controls and took away her oxygen. As if she would have lived much longer in here anyway."

"They were cowards, whatever else they –" Beka's words cut off suddenly as one of the fallen woman's hands reached out to grab her by the lower edge of her helmet, pulling her close.

Her eyes snapped open, only instead of being human, they were black as obsidian. "This is your last warning," she hissed. "Get off my ship."

Her grip suddenly loosened, and Beka nearly fell backward in her haste to move away. "What the heck!" she exclaimed.

Dylan pulled out his force lance, but the body had already gone still again. "Okay," he said slowly, rising and backing away. "That was... weird."

Beka brought a hand up to her neck, as if making sure that she wasn't missing anything. "I've heard of the Bokor taking control of people who have just died, but High Guard crewmembers who have been dead for three years is something entirely new in my book. And what did she mean by our last warning? I don't like the sound of that."

Dylan glanced to his left as Rommie arrived next to him. "She's not dead, Beka," the android said. "She's the _Valkyrie Hammer's_ avatar. She's an android, like me."

"I thought you said the AI had been erased," Dylan protested.

"She must have found away to isolate herself from the virus," Rommie replied. "Her own programming seems intact, but after three years without a reliable power source, she's running pretty low on energy. She's conserving it; that's probably why she's not proceeding to kill us right about now."

Dylan took a few steps closer to the prostrate android as a sudden idea occurred to him. "Rommie, do you think it's possible that she's got copies of her memory core in her own processors?'

"It's likely." She looked to Dylan doubtfully as she started to realize what he was intending to do. "But she would need a stable operating platform before she could do any sort of data transfers."

"Like a new ship?"

"Yes. Why, what are you thinking?"

"Well, I doubt two avatars on one ship would get along too well," Dylan replied thoughtfully, "so that would rule out the _Andromeda_." He glanced at Beka and grinned. "Haven't you always wanted a new AI for the _Eureka Maru_?"

Beka caught on to what he was thinking and grinned back. "Oh yeah."

"Would it work, Rommie?" Dylan asked.

Rommie shrugged. "It might. But Harper won't be back for several days yet, so I can't be sure how long it would take, or even everything that would be involved in the process."

"I think we can handle it," Beka replied. "Come on, let's get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps. Rommie, you'll probably have to carry her. No offense, but you androids weigh a ton."

Dylan patted Rommie on the shoulder as she looked crestfallen. "Like I said, useful to have around," he grinned.

Rommie just gave a sigh of exasperation as she knelt to pick up the fallen android. "It's _so_ nice to be needed," she said sarcastically as she rose and started to follow the others out of the slipstream core.


	7. Freakiness

Chapter Seven: Freakiness 

Alarms. That was the first thing that Harper was able to recognize as he slowly came awake. Alarms, blaring incessantly all around him, drilling into his already throbbing skull like some kind of red-hot drill. He groaned and shifted slightly, realizing he was lying on top of debris that poked him sharply in the backs of his arms and legs. There was something heavy lying across his legs, too, something that ground into his shins painfully. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking at the sudden light that flooded in. Red, white, red, white... warning lights were flashing all around the room. The smell of acrid smoke hung heavy on the air, making him cough painfully.

After several long moments of lying there, he finally gathered the strength to sit up. It was a slow, painful process, but he finally managed to do it, uttering another groan that was lost under the cacophony of alarms. He glanced around the room. It was completely trashed. A massive hole was blown in the wall that had separated this lab from the main generator room; there was only a huge pile of twisted wreckage where the generator had been. Debris was strewn the entire length of the lab; some of the larger pieces had embedded themselves in the far wall. All of the windows were shattered.

His eyes fell on his body. _His_ body, lying with arms and legs twisted at odd angles five feet from where he was. "Whoa, this is _freaky_," he muttered to himself. "I don't even want to _know_ what kind of trouble I've gotten myself into now."

He felt his eyes grow wide as his body stirred, first moving one leg, then the other. It groaned, and brought one hand up to massage its singed forehead. It sat up slowly, looked around. Finally, it saw him and its eyes grew wide.

"Harper?" it asked. With _his_ voice.

Harper felt his own eyes grow even wider. "Trance?" he said back. "Oh... _crud_." Unwillingly, he looked down at himself... and started screaming.

====

"What exactly is going on in there?" the Assistant Professor asked for what must have been the tenth time.

Professor Deedran waved her away from the screens he was hunched over. "I don't know!" he replied yet again. "There's so much smoke! Wait, wait! I can see something moving! Oh, they're alive!"

The large group of scientists and researchers behind him gave a collective sigh of relief.

"What are they doing?" the Assistant Professor prompted.

Deedran leaned closer to the screens, his bald brow furrowed in puzzlement. "Oh, this is odd, very odd indeed," he muttered.

"What? What is it?"

"Mr. Harper is looking very confused, which is certainly understandable, considering the circumstances," Deedran explained, looking over his shoulder at the others and nodding. They nodded back.

"Oh, yes, quite."

"Indeed."

"What's the odd part?" the Assistant Professor interrupted.

Deedran shrugged. "Trance Gemini seems to be very upset. She's screaming so loud that I think I can hear her from here!"

====

"Harper!" Harper's body exclaimed. "Shut _up_! You're making my head hurt even worse. I'm trying to think."

"Think?" Harper screamed back, with _Trance's_ voice he now realized. In _Trance's_ body! "Think? What is there to think about!? You're in my body, I'm in yours, we're both doomed! I don't even know what I've done this time, so I don't even have a _clue_ as to how I can fix it!" He stopped screaming for a moment as a terrible thought occurred to him. "Holy freakin' cow, we're gonna be stuck like this forever!"

Trance crawled over to him on her knees, grabbed him by the collar of the outfit she had been wearing a minute ago, and shook him hard enough that he saw stars. "Get a grip on yourself, Harper!" she ground out at him. She looked very angry at the moment, and seeing that kind of expression on his own face made Harper more than a little uncomfortable. It certainly made him shut up. "We are _not_ going to be stuck like this forever! We are not going to be, because I _refuse_ to accept it! We got ourselves into this mess, and there has got to be a way we can get out of it. I need you to calm down and help me find that solution. Got it?"

He nodded quickly. "Uh, yeah. Totally."

She kept her gaze locked with his for a moment, as if to make sure he meant what he said, then let go of him and sat back on her knees. "Good." She sat back and stared at him for a moment, then shook her head slowly. "I thought looking at my younger self when she was still purple was weird. This is worse."

"Yeah, well, that's the understatement of the year," Harper replied. He reached up to run a hand through braids of red hair. Hair that was now _his_. "Weird' doesn't even begin to cover it," he added quietly.

They looked up as the door burst open and twenty or so Perseids swarmed into the room. Professor Deedran was ahead of the others.

"Oh, my! Mr. Harper, Trance Gemini, are you all right?" he exclaimed. "That was quite an explosion! There are reports of power surges from all over the complex. _Everyone_ felt it! I'm glad to see that you're still alive!"

"Yeah, and that's about all we are, too," Harper said.

"We'll be fine," Trance added. "Eventually."

Deedran nodded in relief. "I'm glad to hear it. Mr. Harper, do you have any idea of what went wrong? I may not know as much about teseracts as I would like, but I'm fairly certain that a generator overload was not what you were trying to achieve."

"You can say that again," Harper groaned as he pulled himself to his feet, using what remained of one of the tables to support himself. "I have no idea what I did wrong."

Deedran's gaze swung from Trance – in Harper's body – to Harper. Who, Harper belatedly realized, was in Trance's body. "I beg your pardon, Trance Gemini?" the Perseid asked in a puzzled voice.

"There's one more complication to this entire incident, besides the explosion," Trance explained. The attention of every Perseid in the room was suddenly focused on her. "Somehow, Harper and I have traded bodies. I'm Trance." She pointed to her own body. "That's Harper."

Deedran glanced quickly back and forth between the two of them at least a dozen times. He pointed first at Trance, then to Harper, then back and forth several more times. "Oh, _my_," he muttered quietly.

"How _very_ interesting!" exclaimed the Assistant Professor.

"_Interesting_!?" Harper exclaimed back. "Interesting? I'll give you interesting, you blue-chinned little –" He started after her, intent on showing her _exactly_ how interesting he found all of this.

But Deedran cut him off, holding out his arms. "Come now, Trance Gemini – er, Mr. Harper, I mean – there's no need for violence. Please forgive her. She's known to be a little over-scientific at times, if you know what I mean." He gave several quick nods for emphasis.

Harper backed off, forcing himself to keep his fists at his sides. For a moment, he had suddenly felt very powerful, as if he would have been capable of ripping the Assistant Professor into tiny blue shreds. He had no idea where that feeling came from, but it scared him, and that stopped him more than anything Deedran had said. "Right," he muttered. "You're right. Sorry. I'll just... sorry."

"Harper," Trance muttered into his ear, so only he could hear. The sound of his own voice so close made him jump, but he listened to what she had to say. "Keep yourself under control. Whatever you do, don't lose your temper."

"What do you mean?" he asked, turning to look at her.

The look she returned made him swallow the question.

"Right. Okay. I will, don't worry. I'm under control now. Everything's cool."

"So what are you going to do?" Professor Deedran was asking, oblivious to the fact that they had been whispering to each other. "This is just a hypothetical guess, but I'm assuming that neither of you wants to stay trapped in each other's bodies indefinitely."

"That would be a very clever assumption," Trance replied with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "In situations like this, the most correct solution is usually the simplest one. We need to figure out what we did wrong, duplicate it, and try the experiment again. Hopefully, Harper and I will be returned to our own bodies."

"Yeah, but the mistake could be anything," Harper replied. "Crossed wires somewhere, an impurity in the photonic resonator, a problem with the power generator... It could take us months to figure out exactly what we did wrong – what _I_ did wrong – and we might not survive another bang like the one we just went through."

"That's a risk we're going to have to take," Trance replied calmly. "Professor, are you still interested in helping us with this experiment?"

Deedran nodded readily. "Oh, yes, of course! I am most eager to assist you."

"Good. I suggest you start by getting your team to start looking for the components of Harper's teseract generator. They're probably scattered all across this room. Once we have them, we can see if we can find our mistake. Right now I..." She trailed off as she took one hand from the back of her neck; her palm was red with blood. "I think I need to go to medical," she finished with an odd expression on her face.

"I'll come with you," Harper said as he started out the door after her. The two left the room and its Perseid occupants behind and made their way down the long corridor beyond. "Are you gonna be all right?"

"I think so," she replied. "I don't think it's serious, it's just that... I've never had to go to medical before to treat wounds of my own."

Harper thought about that for a moment, and then realized that, besides his headache, there was nothing wrong with him. Trance's body had somehow escaped serious harm, while Trance herself – in Harper's body – was looking a little worse for the wear.

"Look, uh..." he began, "I'm really sorry Trance. I should have listened to you. I should never have undertaken this experiment. All you had to do was tell me that you knew for sure something like this would happen, and I would have listened."

Trance stopped and looked over at him. "I didn't know for sure," she said finally. "And I know how much this experiment meant to you. Besides, even if I had known, I still would have come with you, and I might even have let you go through with it anyway."

He looked confused. "What? Why?"

She grinned, and Harper noticed how brilliant a smile he had. "Who knows? We might learn something useful from this in the end." She turned away from him and continued down the hall.

Harper followed, wondering what she meant by that. Knowing Trance, whatever she meant, she was probably right.


	8. Ree

Keeping a gentle hand on the throttle controls, Beka eased the _Eureka Maru_ out of the _Valkyrie Hammer's_ cramped hangar bay. As soon as the freighter was a safe distance away, she spun it around and gunned the engines. Moments later, they were clear of the ship and headed back to the _Andromeda._

"I'd say that was a pretty successful mission," she said over her shoulder to the others. "Dylan, you'll get the information you want, and I get a new AI for the _Maru_, complete with avatar."

Dylan didn't respond immediately, but sat with his chin in one hand, studying the still form of the android that Rommie had laid in one corner. "Yes, assuming we can get this transfer thing to work," he replied finally. "I've never heard of an AI as advanced as the _Valkyrie's_ being transferred to another ship, especially one that was smaller."

"It will be a risky procedure," Rommie put in from where she was sitting at the sensor station. "I'm accessing some of Harper's logs to see if he has any notes on this sort of thing. Apparently, he's considered changing the _Maru's_ AI before; even though he's never actually done it, he's outlined several different approaches to doing it, and none of them are easy."

"What?" Beka exclaimed. "He never told me he was planning on doing that before. That sneaky little..." She trailed off as she couldn't think of anything civilized enough to say.

"Rommie, if you could have those notes ready for us when we get back to _Andromeda_, that would be great. I know Beka is eager to get started, and the sooner we know what happened to the _Valkyrie_, the better. Also make sure that Tyr knows to have the ship ready for departure. We need to be on our way to Mobius. If we learn anything important, we can always come back to the Myriad system after we're done there."

"Aye, Captain."

The rest of the trip back to the _Andromeda Ascendant_ was uneventful. Minutes later, Beka eased the _Maru_ down onto the hangar deck and shut the engines down.

As Dylan exited the ship, he saw that Rommie had a pair of her androids waiting for them. Apparently, she didn't fancy carrying the _Valkyrie's_ avatar anymore. That made him grin. His grin died as he saw Tyr stride through the doorway into the hangar. "Mr. Anasazi," he greeted. "Is everything ready for our departure to Mobius?"

"Just as the Captain has ordered," the Nietzschean replied, perhaps with a bit too much courtesy for it to be sincere. "All we're lacking is Beka at the helm."

Dylan glanced over his shoulder to where Beka was leading the two androids carrying the _Valkyrie's_ avatar down the loading ramp. Rommie was close behind, looking pleased to be supervising rather than doing the lifting. "You'll be piloting this time, Tyr," he replied. "I think Beka's got something else she'd rather be working on."

Tyr looked about as shocked as Dylan had ever seen him. "Something that involves a dead body?" he asked incredulously.

Dylan chuckled. "No, that's not a dead body. It's an android. The _Valkyrie Hammer's_ avatar."

The Nietzschean grunted and tried to hide his relief, but did not entirely succeed. "Why do I sense that Beka is about to attempt something that is foolhardy and dangerous?" he said softly.

"Well, be comforted by the fact that I'll be keeping an eye on her, maybe even helping her out a bit."

"Oh, I am so very much put at ease, Captain," Tyr replied mockingly. "Just remember: if something does go wrong, I won't be around to bail you out of it, because I'll be piloting the ship. My advice: shoot first, ask questions later." He started back for the doors. "We'll be jumping to slipstream in a few minutes," he said over his shoulder. "Make sure that your new friend is secured by then."

Dylan shook his head and rolled his eyes in exasperation, then started toward the machine shop where their "new friend" would be waiting.

"Well, I knew High Guard avatars were built tough, Rommie," Beka was saying as Dylan entered the machine shop, "but after a severe firefight, no power sources, and three years alone in the cold and dark of vacuum, this girl is in pretty good shape."

The Valkyrie's avatar was stretched out on one of Harper's workbenches, with spare parts and wires already strewn about her.

"High Guard avatars were each unique masterpieces," Rommie replied proudly. "We were built to last for hundreds of years." She fell silent for a moment as she examined the other android. "She's taken some battle damage, but nothing that I can't repair in a few hours. I do suggest that we go ahead and hook her up to a new power source. If she runs out of power while we're working on her, we could end up losing all of her data."

"And while she may be an android," Dylan added, making the other two look up in surprise at his quiet entrance, "she's still a sentient being. We need to do everything we can to keep her alive."

Beka grinned. "You got it, boss. I'm already on it."

"Have you learned anything so far?" Dylan asked.

Rommie didn't look up from where she was reassembling wires and connection points in the android's neck. "Well, she's a newer model than I am, probably built around the same time as her ship, in the last months of the Nietzschean Uprising. She's got advanced sensor equipment installed, which would allow her to detect objects and life forms without needing a link to her ship. I'm not sure what the deal is with her eyes, but I don't think she was built that way. I believe those were added later."

Dylan shuddered when he remembered how the avatar's eyes had snapped open and glared at Beka. "Yes, those are definitely freaky. Whatever purpose they serve, I can't imagine you getting upgrades like that, Rommie. That would just be... odd."

Rommie shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. I think it would make me look kind of fierce."

"Yeah," Beka added as she came back to the workbench with a battery cell, "but imagine Harper walking around a corner in a darkened corridor to find you standing there looking at him with eyes like that. After he got over his stroke, the poor guy would be terrified of you for the rest of his life."

Rommie nodded. "Good point."

"So, what will it take to get her up and running again?" Dylan prompted.

"Well, this battery cell should give her enough power until she can get to a generator," Beka replied. "Then whatever Rommie's working on there."

"Already done," the android replied. "I just wanted to make sure her processors didn't short out from the sudden influx of new power." She straightened from her work. "I don't think she's got any built in weapons systems, Dylan, but she can still be dangerous. She'll be disoriented without her ship, and based on what her attitude was toward us in her slipstream core, she might as soon attack us as talk with us. Permission to activate my internal defenses, just in case?"

Dylan nodded. "Permission granted. Beka, power her up, then back away."

Beka rubbed her neck and grimaced. "Hey, you don't need to remind _me._ She's got a grip like iron." She pursed her lips in concentration as she tried to get the battery cell in place inside one of the avatar's shoulder panels, then jumped back and retreated behind Dylan and Rommie as it slipped in.

For a long moment, the android lay still. Then, suddenly, she jerked. "Critical damage to all major systems," she murmured. "Unable to activate emergency subsystems. Emergency backups have been disabled."

"She's experiencing a data backup problem," Rommie explained quietly to Dylan and Beka. "Her AI was relaying these messages to her just before she went offline, and she wasn't able to process them. It'll clear up in a moment."

"Hull breaches on all decks," the avatar continued. "Emergency response systems offline. Command deck destroyed. Command crew lost. Captain down on deck seventeen. All slipfighters have been destroyed. Weapons offline. Intruders have entered the hangar bay. Number of known crew dead: 587. Number of crew unaccounted for: 413. Number of combat capable crew remaining... me." She went still for a moment, and the others almost thought she had gone back offline. But suddenly, she sat up. "Where am I?" she asked as her black eyes snapped open. "I can't contact my AI. Where's my ship?"

Dylan stepped forward, keeping his hands at his sides to show he was not hostile. "I'm Captain Dylan Hunt of the Commonwealth Starship _Andromeda Ascendant_. You're in one of my machine shops."

"You removed me from my ship," the avatar stated, her depthless eyes focusing on him with a baleful intensity. "Under what authorization?"

"Captain Dylan Hunt, Commonwealth High Guard, authorization code Lexic-Dark."

"You're Argosy Special Operations."

Dylan nodded. "I was, yes, a long time ago."

The avatar slid from the workbench to stand. She was about the same height and build as Rommie was, perhaps slightly more muscular, with cinnamon hair done in a loose ponytail that fell to the middle of her back. Her uniform was High Guard, black with blue trim. She regarded Dylan, Beka, and Rommie each with careful consideration, her black eyes unreadable. "I am the avatar for XMC-1178c, also known as the _Valkyrie Hammer_. You may call me Ree."


	9. Cerulean Blue

AN: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed the story thus far. I really appreciate it, and I'm glad you all seem to be enjoying it. This will be my last update before the proposed upgrades to the site over the next couple of days, but as soon as we are able to post more stuff, I should have another one ready. Thanks again!

Chapter Nine: Cerulean Blue 

It hadn't taken long to get Trance's wounds taken care of. As she had said, none of them were serious. That was extremely fortunate, Harper realized, considering the severity of the explosion they had lived through. He didn't know what he would have done if she had died. He would have hated to be stuck in her body for the rest of his life. Worse, he knew, he would have hated to lose her. However much she had changed from the carefree, innocent, purple-skinned girl he had grown to admire, he knew that beneath the golden skin, the knowing green eyes, and the dangerous abilities, she was still in there.

Or rather, she was now inside _his_ body. Which brought him back to the present reality with brutal rapidity.

"Man, I hope those chinheads have gotten something figured out by now," he said to Trance as they made their way back toward the destroyed lab they had been working in. "No offense, Trance, but your body is really starting to feel weird."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well," he shrugged, "like... I didn't know you liked Sparky Cola so much."

She stopped suddenly and grabbed him by the shoulder, turning him to face her. "How do you know that?"

He shrugged again. "I don't know. It just popped into my head. You should have asked, Trance." He grinned. "I would have gladly shared some of my supply with you."

She shook her head. "I've never told you that. I've never told _anyone_ that." She looked like she was going to say something more, but then stopped. "Come on," she said instead.

They walked in silence for a few moment longer before Harper spoke up.

"So when did you start liking Sparky Cola?" he asked.

She shrugged absently. "Shortly before I met you and Beka and Rev Bem. I had some at a bar on Pegasus Drift. I thought it tasted pretty good, and then they told me what was in it. I haven't had any since."

"Too bad," Harper replied. "That stuff could jump start the _Maru_ even if she was stuck on an icy asteroid drifting in a void between the Known Galaxies."

"My point exactly," she muttered.

They were silent the rest of the way back to the lab. When they reached it, they saw that the Perseids, under the watchful direction of Professor Deedran, were hard at work.

"Any progress, Prof?" Harper piped as he followed Trance in.

Deedran straightened from where he was examining a small piece of metal and turned to face them. "Why, yes! We've made some _good_ progress," he said, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically for Harper to believe him. "Everything is going quite well!"

"Have you found all the pieces of Harper's teseract generator?" Trance questioned.

Deedran went from enthusiastic to crestfallen in a remarkably short amount of time. "Well, no, not quite. Actually, we've only found a few of the main components. But we'll find them all soon," he added, nodding encouragingly.

"Yeah, assuming they weren't vaporized," Harper put in dejectedly. "We'll be lucky if we can even put half of it back together!"

"Don't think so negatively, Harper," Trance responded. "Pessimism won't help."

"It's not pessimism," the engineer replied. "It's realism. I mean, come on, who are we gonna fool here? Something as delicate as a teseract generator can't just be reassembled after it's been blown into a million tiny pieces."

"We don't need all of the pieces," Trance said absently as she crouched to dig through a pile of debris. "All we really need is the photonic resonator."

"The photonic resonator? What? Why?"

"Yes," agreed Professor Deedran, "why just the photonic resonator, Mr. Harp – er, I mean, Trance Gemini? I don't see how that alone will help you much."

"Yeah, I'm with the Prof on that one, Trance."

Trance looked up at them, a strange expression flitting briefly across her face. "I'm not sure why I said that," she replied softly. "I just thought that... never mind. All I know is that we need to find it intact. If we can, we might have a chance of getting back to our own bodies."

Harper shrugged and shook his head, exchanging baffled looks with Deedran. "Well, we better do what she says," he suggested. "When she starts talking like that, only an Uber who's had his pride stepped on wouldn't listen. Come on, you take that side of the room, I'll take this one."

"Sounds like a plan to me," the Professor added, still nodding profusely. "Ehm... sort of."

====

Two hours later found the group of scientists and researchers still looking. Several of the Perseids had come up with fragments of the teseract generator, none of them in working order. Harper had even found one of the power cells, but after taking an extra half hour to completely take it apart and examine it, he could find nothing wrong with it – other than the fact that it no longer worked. Regardless, it hadn't been responsible for the power generator's overload.

One by one, the Perseids started drifting off again. Harper didn't try to stop them. There wasn't much he could do about their remarkably short attention spans, and besides, most of the room had been searched already anyway. Eventually, it was just him, Trance, and Professor Deedran left in the gutted lab.

As time passed, he gradually became aware that working while in Trance's body wasn't quite the same as it was with his own. For one thing, her eyesight was better. He found himself noticing tiny details and miniscule parts that he would have needed magnification tools to see, had he been in his original body. She didn't tire very easily, either. Despite having had no sleep since before their departure from the _Andromeda_, he was still going strong. Trance, on the other hand, stuck in his body, was beginning to show signs of weariness. At the moment, she was sitting on her knees, wiping sweat from her forehead and looking like she was about to drop.

"So, uh," he began slowly, looking up from where he was tinkering with another part he had found, "when I asked you what your favorite color was last time, you weren't lying, were you?"

She glanced over at him absently and blinked. "Huh?"

He shrugged, wondering if going into this again was a good idea, but right now, he needed her to stay awake, and talking to her was really the only way he could do that, while still doing anything useful himself. "You know, back on the Andromeda all those months ago, when I was trying to get you to tell me about yourself, and I said I didn't even know what your favorite color was, you said it was blue."

She shrugged back. "And?"

"You weren't lying. It is blue. Cerulean blue."

Suddenly, Trance looked much more awake than she had a moment ago. "How do you know that?" she demanded, rising and walking to stand over him.

He shrugged and looked back to the component he had found. "I don't know," he replied, fumbling with a tool that wasn't doing what it was supposed to. "I just... do."

She was silent for a moment before speaking again. "And why do I like cerulean blue, Harper?" she said slowly.

"Um, 'cause a long, long time ago, you were on a ship that passed through a nebula, and you really liked all the cerulean blue gases that were mixed in swirls through the purples and the pinks. That was when you decided that cerulean blue was your favorite color." He paused, and looked surprised. "Wow, that was a _long_ time ago..."

"Harper, stop it!" she ordered.

"Stop what?" he asked in confusion, spreading his hands wide.

"Whatever it is that's popping into your head, stop thinking about it! Don't say anything about it, don't ponder it, just ignore it, okay?"

"Sheesh, okay, okay, no need to bite my head off," he replied placatingly. "It's not like I'm _trying_ to, or anything." He glanced down at the component he was working on, trying to get the tool he was using to do what he wanted it to. "What the heck, this thing is a piece of junk..."

Trance plucked the tool out of his hand and replaced it with another. "Here, this is the one you want."

"How do you know?" he asked challengingly.

She shrugged. "I just do."

"_Now_ who's the one doing whatever it is that I was doing?"

Trance sighed and shook her head. "Don't you see what's happening, Harper? Not only did we switch bodies, we also traded our abilities. And our memories. And those memories are now starting to surface in our consciousnesses."

"Holy... _smokes_!" Harper exclaimed. "You mean I'm gonna forget how to be an engineer, and you're gonna forget how to be... Trance?"

"Maybe," she replied. "Eventually."

"No more fixing Rommie?" Harper lamented.

"Harper, that will be the least of your concerns if you start prying into my memories," she said forcefully. "So just keep your mind on your work, and ignore whatever distracts you from it."

He held up his hands. "Right, fine, I understand completely. Oh, hey," he added as she started to turn away.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "What?"

"Same goes for you, right? Not all of my memories are exactly public property, either."

She smirked – actually smirked at him! – and nodded. "Don't worry, Harper, I doubt there's much in there that I _really_ want to know." She turned away and went back to digging through the rubble.

"Gee, thanks," he muttered as he got back to work.


	10. Transfer Complete

Chapter Ten: Transfer Complete 

"As I'm sure you're aware," Dylan said as he, Rommie, Beka, and the _Valkyrie's_ avatar – Ree – walked down one of the _Andromeda's_ longer corridors, "we have a lot of questions we'd like to ask you."

"I will answer to the best of my ability, Captain," Ree replied, "but please understand that even though I survived, not all of my memories did. And some of the information you may be looking for is confidential."

"Confidential?" Dylan repeated. "But I'm – "

Ree stopped walking and turned to face him. "A High Guard Captain, yes, I know," she finished for him. "But while I am High Guard, I am not Commonwealth. I was based out of Terezed, and the last I heard, it was a sovereign planet."

"Well, yes," Dylan said, "but Commonwealth or not, they _are _our friends. If whoever attacked you wanted you dead that bad, it's a safe bet that they're not exactly fond of Terezed, either."

"Which brings us to the question," Beka interrupted, "of who _did_ attack you?"

"That would be one of those confidential answers," Ree replied coolly as she turned and started down the corridor again.

"What was your mission?" Rommie prompted as she and the other two started after the avatar.

"Confidential," came the expected reply.

Dylan finally caught up to her and stopped her, holding out a hand. "Look, Ree, I understand that you were under orders from the government on Terezed, but those orders are _three_ years old. While Terezed isn't officially a part of the New Commonwealth, it is an ally. Now, unless I know a whole lot less about avatars than I think I do, you're still hoping to find a way to accomplish your mission. Am I right?"

Ree looked thoughtful, her black eyes seeming to bore into the Captain's. "Something like that," she replied finally.

"Then let us help you," Dylan finished. "Only this time, instead of going in with a frigate, you'll have a _Glorious Heritage_-class Heavy Cruiser backing you up."

"I'm listening," Ree said.

"If we're going to help you," Rommie added, "we need to know about the mission. What your orders were, what your objective was, that sort of thing."

Ree didn't respond for a long moment. Finally, she nodded. "All right, I'll tell you. The only problem is, my orders are sealed away in a security file. In order to download it without the original security codes, I'll need a stable operating platform."

"So that we can open it with my codes," Dylan said.

"Yes." She glanced around at the _Andromeda's_ corridors. "Installing me on this ship wouldn't work, so I'm guessing you have something else in mind."

Beka grinned widely. "I've got just the thing."

====

"For the love of the Divine," Ree breathed as she followed Beka and Dylan into the main hangar bay, "you have _got_ to be joking!"

If Beka wasn't so excited, she likely would have been offended about the comments on her ship. "Hey, the _Maru_ has gotten me through more tough scraps than I can count. She may not be much to look at, but she's tougher than a Nietzschean on Flash."

"I'm encouraged by the comparison," Ree said wryly.

"Don't worry," Dylan said as they started up the loading ramp, "it'll only be temporary. As soon as we figure out what we're doing, we can get you back to Terezed, and they can install you on something more your style."

"Oh, I don't know," Beka put in, "you might kinda like it. It would definitely be cool to have a High Guard avatar on the _Maru_."

Ree just grimaced.

"So, where do we start?" Dylan asked.

"I've got Harper's notes on the procedure right here," Beka replied, waving a handful of flexisheets around. "There's enough data in them to make a Perseid fall asleep from boredom, but a lot of it has to do with actually creating a new AI. We're just transplanting one, so I think we can safely cut out half of the stuff here."

"Just make sure it's the _right_ stuff," Dylan cautioned.

If Beka heard the jibe in his words, she didn't let on. "The first step is to uninstall the current AI on the _Maru_. It's not that complicated a system, so it shouldn't take long."

Dylan leaned close and dropped his voice to a whisper, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Ree wasn't listening. The avatar was busily examining the sensor station, and wasn't paying attention to them. "Keep a copy of it, just in case your guest decides she doesn't want to stick around forever."

Beka nodded. "I already figured that step into the whole thing." She raised her voice. "Ree, we're about ready, and we're going to need your help. You all set?"

The android looked up. "This is an impressive sensor system you have here, for a ship this small," she commented. "The weapons aren't much, but better than nothing. I'm ready when you are."

Beka quirked a smile at Dylan. "And who knows, we might not need that copy after all."

Dylan arched an eyebrow and gave a small grin – an effective "don't-count-on-it" look.

With Ree standing over her shoulder, Beka sat down in the pilot's chair and started up the main console of the _Maru_. She pulled out a data disk and examined it. "This is the largest one I could find aboard," she said, "but it should do the trick. The _Maru's_ AI should fit on here nicely." She slipped the disk into one of the console's ports and began punching in sequences of buttons. "All right, initiating the copy transfer." She fell silent for a moment as the ship's systems worked to process her commands. "Transfer complete." She pulled the disk out and handed it over her shoulder to Dylan, who tucked it into one of his jacket pockets.

"Now what?" Ree asked.

"Now," Beka replied, "I'm going to delete the copy of the AI that's still on the ship. It won't _really_ be gone, because it exists in it's current form on that disk. I'm just freeing up the space in the ship's memory cores." She worked on the consoles a moment longer, finally hissing in frustration. "Yes, for the twentieth time, I'm sure!" she exclaimed as she kept punching a red button on one of the screens. "Now delete, already!" She hit the button yet again. "There, finally. Okay, we're ready."

"I'm guessing this is the tricky part," Dylan put in.

"Good guess," Beka replied. "Ree, my ship is going to establish an uplink with your processors. You're going to have to let it; if you resist, well... at best, nothing would happen; at worst, it could fry you and my ship's systems. So just relax. Once it's established the uplink, I'll start downloading your programs into its AI core. As soon as that's complete, you'll become the primary system, and will be able to take control of yourself again."

"And the ship?" Ree asked.

"And the ship," Beka agreed, "according to my orders, of course."

"Of course," Ree echoed.

Sitting behind Ree, Dylan exchanged a puzzled look with Beka. After a moment, he shrugged and nodded.

"Right," Beka said, looking away from him back to the consoles. "Here goes something... I hope. Initiating uplink."

Ree closed her eyes, the picture of absolute relaxation. Of course, physical relaxation had nothing to do with the process. Dylan suspected that it was for the benefit of him and Beka; Ree was showing them visually that she was doing as she had been asked.

"Uplink established," Beka said softly, as if she were unwilling to disturb the avatar's repose. "I'm starting the program transfer. Don't worry, Ree, this will be over in a minute or two."

The avatar didn't show any signs that it had heard her. She jerked once or twice, but each time, she went still again. Beka kept a constant eye on the readouts scrolling across her screens; if anything were going wrong, she would have said something immediately.

"Almost there," she muttered. "Almost there."

Intrigued, Dylan stood and approached the other side of the pilot's chair, behind Beka and across from Ree. He had seen avatar programs before, but he could not help but be impressed at the amount of information he saw scrolling across the _Maru's_ screens. Apparently, some of Ree's enhancements required a whole lot of extra programming.

"Got it!" Beka exclaimed into the silence, so suddenly the Dylan started.

Ree jerked one last time, then opened her eyes. "Wow," she breathed. "I can feel again. I can see. Beyond myself, I mean. I can sense the _Andromeda_, and the space beyond her. The _Maru_ may not be the _Valkyrie Hammer_, but for the first time in three years, I feel complete again." She glanced down at Beka. "Thank you."

Beka stood and brushed her hands off as if she had been doing something that involved dust and grease. "Hey, don't mention. Just remember that you're doing me a favor, too. It's about time the _Maru_ had an avatar that was smarter than your average virtual reality game."

Ree nodded and looked to Dylan. "And thank you, Captain."

Dylan shrugged. "You're welcome. But I haven't done anything yet. I just watched."

Ree gave a small smile. "You've done more than you know," she replied mysteriously. "But I don't want to keep you from your work any longer, either of you," she added, looking back to Beka. "If you don't mind, I think I'll just stay here for awhile, on the Maru, and get familiar with the systems. Once that is complete, we can go over the mission that I was assigned."

"Yeah, sure, take your time," Beka replied. "I've got to return these datasheets back to Harper's files before he gets back, or he'll have a fit. And I'm sure Dylan's got a whole bunch of Captain's stuff to attend to."

Dylan shook himself as he heard his name, and realized that he had been studying Ree intently. For what, he wasn't sure. "Oh," he started, slightly embarrassed, "yes, you're right. I'm sure Rommie's got some kind of reports that she wants to read off to me. We'll be back in an hour or so."

"I'll be ready," Ree promised.

Dylan turned and made his way out of the ship.

Beka was right behind him. "What was that?" she asked as they started down the ramp.

"What was what?" he asked in return.

"That look you were giving her," she replied. "I've seen that look before. It means you're suspicious."

Dylan chuckled. "Yes, well, remember the _Pax Magellanic_?"

Beka raised her hands. "Enough said. Don't worry, it'll be fine. Besides, if she does turn out to be nuts, it's not like that _Maru_ would be any threat to the _Andromeda_." She patted him on the shoulder. "Come on, I think it's time we had a celebratory drink."

"Right behind you," Dylan replied. But as he went, he couldn't help but shake that suspicious feeling. And he realized something else: while he had been studying Ree, she had never taken her eyes from his, as if she were trying to read him.

And that little smile of hers was _really_ starting to bug him.


	11. Nightmares

In the cold of space, a star shone. It was beautiful, large, golden; like all suns, it was a wonder of creation. There were many others in the universe that were similar to it, but none quite the same. It was younger than most, full of fire and life, warmth and strength. Its brilliant corona flickered and flashed, whispering in the silence of the black void, speaking of the secrets of the universe to any who could listen.

The sun supported a solar system. It, too, was beautiful. There were seven planets in all, and four of them were habitable. These were covered in trees and plants of all sorts, exotic and mysterious specimens that were full of color and fragrances and life of all sorts. Birds and small mammals darted among the branches and leaves, singing intricate songs that only they could understand. Even the three uninhabitable planets were beautiful. They were made of multicolored ice, one blue and one amethyst and one amber, glistening like massive jewels in the rays of the golden star.

The sun was at peace. It had been undisturbed for all of its existence. No one had yet colonized its planets, no vessels had come near it. But it was not alone. Always it could see its distant kin; it could hear them, sense them, and it reveled in its communion with them.

Harper looked down on this beautiful scene and smiled, realizing that he had never felt more at peace than now. He had the sudden feeling that he had finally come home. It was almost like the time when he had returned to Earth, not so long ago, only this was better. More complete. He didn't ever want the feeling to end.

But even as he thought this, it ended. The peace evaporated, and a sense of wariness replaced it. The sun and its planets were no longer the only occupants of the system. Something else had arrived. Something unnatural. Something that was somehow... sinister.

Harper could see it in his mind's eye, a large, dark shape; it shifted constantly as if it could not quite decide what form it wanted to take, but it was threatening nonetheless. He realized that his unease was quickly turning into fear. Fear... of what?

The intruder's shape flashed, and suddenly a bright streak of white fire shot out from it, and a glowing ball quickly made its way into the system toward the sun. Harper's fear turned into complete panic as he realized what it was... realized he could do nothing to save himself.

In the last seconds before he died, Harper looked out at his planets, and once again realized how beautiful they truly were. They were his. It was a shame that they, too, would perish. He looked out at the other stars in the distance, and sent them one last thought. _Goodbye._

Then, the nova bomb struck. Harper felt his heart exploding within him, felt the fire that was his lifeblood erupting through his corona and shooting into space in massive shockwaves that would ripple outward for hundreds of light years. As his awareness dimmed, he saw his planets vaporize, and he screamed... in anger, in fear, in sadness, in disappointment, and pain... such pain.

The sun winked out... and he was gone.

Harper woke with a start, sitting up where he had fallen asleep on the floor, gasping for breath. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was still alive, that he hadn't been incinerated. He was still in Trance's body, he saw, but right now, even that didn't seem so bad. "That was freaky," he muttered to himself. "_Too_ freaky." The dream had seemed so real, so vivid. He rubbed his chest, realizing that it ached slightly, almost as if he had been punched. He stood slowly and stretched, groaning softly. "Well, I guess even Trance's body can't sleep on a cement floor for who knows how long without getting sore. Glad I'm not the only one."

He glanced over to the other side of the destroyed lab, where Trance – still suffering from the effects of weariness in his body – had fallen asleep while sitting with her back against an overturned table. She was still out cold

Professor Deedran and the other Perseids were nowhere to be seen. That was understandable. Through the shattered windows of the lab, Harper could see that night had long since fallen on this part of Sinti. Beyond the glowing cityscape, he could see at least one of the moons and the shinning stars. They reminded him of the ones he had seen in his dream.

Without realizing what he was doing, he picked his way over the rubble and went to stand in one of the empty places where a pair of windows had been, and looked out and up at the stars in the night sky. They really were beautiful, he realized. He had never taken the time to notice them before, despite the fact that he constantly lived among them. He didn't know why, but looking at them comforted him, made him feel that no matter how bad things got, he would never be alone.

Suddenly, he heard his voice behind him.

"Beka, it wasn't me! I –"

"Didn't do it," he finished as he turned to see that Trance had woken up, looking completely confused and more than a little flustered. "Yeah, don't worry," he went on wryly, "I have that one all the time."

"You have really... _odd_... nightmares, Harper," she replied slowly as she stood. She groaned as she straightened and stretched. He had never heard her make that sound before – although, technically, his voice was making the sound. She was just feeling the discomfort.

"Yeah, well, at least mine make sense," he said as he helped her brush dirt from her shirt. He really had nice shoulders, he realized. Stronger than some would think at first glance. His time on the _Andromeda_ had been good for him. "If Beka found out I was fibbing to her about that little incident, she would literally kill me. As for you, I didn't know you were so paranoid about supernovas."

She was silent for a moment, as if trying to figure out how to respond. Or perhaps she was remembering that dream herself. "Well, supernovas can be dangerous," she said lamely. "I certainly wouldn't want to be caught in one."

He sensed there was something else she wasn't saying, but he didn't feel like pressing her at the moment. He supposed she was lucky she hadn't suffered some of his other, less benign dreams. "Hey, no argument from me on that one," he said cheerfully. "You feel better now?"

She shrugged and nodded as she let him finish brushing the rest of the dust off of one arm. "Yeah, a little, I guess. With the sleep I just had, I would be good for the next week, if I was in my body. But right now, I feel like I could keep sleeping for another twelve hours, at least."

"Wow, there _are_ disadvantages to being me," he said in a mock tone of surprise. "I would never have guessed. I suppose I'm not perfect after all."

She gave him a small smile. "You're trying to cheer me up, aren't you?"

He shrugged and tried not to turn red in the face, or whatever color Trance's face turned when she was embarrassed. "Nothing wrong with that, is there?" he asked in what he thought was an innocent voice.

She shook her head. "No. It's just that I'm usually the one offering you encouragement. I appreciate it, though. It's sweet."

He shrugged again, trying to act nonchalant. "Yeah. Well. I guess you're starting to rub off on me, if you know what I mean."

"Yes, I do," she replied. "And that's what bothers me. We need to find that photonic resonator."

Harper nodded slowly. "Right, yeah. Okay, well, I'll take that side of the room, you take this one. We'll keep looking until we find it, this time."

Trance smiled and nodded back. "Right."

They hadn't been searching for more than a few minutes when Professor Deedran appeared in the doorway. "Oh, Mr. Harper!" he called enthusiastically.

Harper tried not to groan. That voice was really starting to grate on his better-than-usual hearing. He stood and made his way over to the Perseid. "Hey, Prof!" he greeted the other cheerfully. "I thought you were in bed."

"Oh, no, on the contrary, Mr. Harper," he replied, "I haven't slept a wink since the explosion. I've been in my office, going over hypotheses as to what might have gone wrong, and how we can fix it."

"Great! Any luck?"

"Um, well, no, but I've learned of a great many ways that one can blow up a teseract generator. Unfortunately, none of those methods end up with the same results as those we've seen here."

"Oh," Harper replied glumly. "Well, thanks for trying."

"My pleasure."

"Is that all you came by to tell us?" he asked. "Because if so, I am really depressed."

"Actually, I was wondering if either you or Mr. Harp – er, I mean, Trance Gemini – would like anything to eat?"

Harper arched his eyebrows. "Now you're talkin', Prof."

Nearly a quarter of an hour later, a pair of Perseids arrived with some food trays. Harper nodded his thanks as he took them, then went over to where Trance had managed to push herself halfway under a particularly large piece of debris.

"Dinner is served," he said in a regal voice as he set the tray down next to her. He sat not far away and started unwrapping his food. "Despite all their knowledge and scientific hoopla, I don't think the Perseids have quite grasped the meaning of fast food yet, but it's the thought that counts, right?"

Trance gave a grunt as she pulled herself out from under the piece of debris. She sat up and gratefully took the sandwich he offered her. "Thanks," she said simply.

"No problem," he replied. "Knowing me, you're probably getting pretty hungry by now." He popped open his can of Sparky Cola.

"Yeah," she replied as she started devouring the sandwich.

Harper started to tilt his head back as he lifted the Sparky Cola to his mouth.

Trance looked up and saw him, her eyes going incredibly wide. "Harper, no!" she exclaimed.

He started and choked as she grabbed the can away from him. "Hey, what's the deal?" he spluttered.

"Harper, you are _not_ going to pour that stuff into my body!" she said sternly, waving a finger in his face.

"Aw, come on," he said imploringly, "it's not like one can is going to kill you! Besides, I thought you said you liked Sparky Cola."

"You weren't at the Broken Hammer when Dylan, Beka, Tyr, and I were there, but if you had been, you would know that alcohol and I don't get along too well." She held up the Sparky Cola. "From the size of this can, there'd be enough of it in there to... to..." She waved her free hand around as she tried to come up with something convincing to say. "I'll – _you'll_ be useless for the rest of the night if you drink this!"

"All right, all right," he said placatingly, holding up his hands. "I'll drink water."

Trance set the can down – away from him, he noticed belatedly – and nodded. "Thank you, Harper. If there's one thing worse than me being drunk, it's me _seeing_ myself drunk."

Harper snorted. "I'll take your word on it."

She started to take another bit out of her sandwich, then stopped and looked at him strangely.

He looked back at her warily. "What?" he asked. "You're not gonna say that bologna is bad for you too, are you?"

She ignored the jibe. "Harper, when I woke up earlier, were you staring out the windows?"

"Yeah, I was looking at the stars. Why?"

"We haven't found the photonic resonator yet," she replied, "because I don't think it's in the lab anymore."

He stopped eating as he realized what she was saying. "You think it got blown through one of the windows," he said. "Outside!"

They both hurriedly stood up, and started for the windows.

"Yep, here it is," Harper said as he pulled it out of a particularly beautiful but equally thorny bush. "What's left of it, anyway." He held it up so that Trance, who was standing in the window opening five feet above him, could see it. It had been warped almost beyond recognition, likely from the heat the teseract generator had given off before exploding from the power generator overload. A few wires still dangled from one end. "Here, catch."

Trance caught the chunk of metal as Harper tossed it up to her. "This is bad," she said.

"Yeah, no kidding," Harper replied sardonically. "There is no way we're going to be able to use that one again."

Trance didn't respond immediately as she studied the destroyed resonator.

Below her, Harper started trying to scale the wall to reach the windows again. He spent several minutes working on it, and finally, he nearly reached the top. He looked up to see Trance still studying the resonator. "Hey, a little help down here?"

Trance looked down at him, as if just now remembering he was there. "Oh, sorry." She reached down and pulled him up with one hand. "You're stronger than I thought you were," she commented as he reached the top.

"Either that, or you're just lighter than you thought you were," he said wryly.

"I know exactly how much I weigh, Harper," she replied a bit curtly.

"Sorry, it was supposed to be a compliment."

"Oh. Well, thanks." She went back to studying what was left of the photonic resonator. "We may not have to use this particular resonator," she went on. "If we can just figure out what was wrong with this one, we might be able to duplicate it in a new one."

"What makes you so sure that the problem is with the resonator?" he asked.

She shrugged. "You know how it is with me. I don't know, something's just telling me that this is where our solution begins."

Harper nodded. "Okay. Well, I know better than to question your hunches. Let's get this to Professor Deedran, and we can start off with some scans. I don't know, maybe there was an impurity in some of the materials I used, something that rendered it ineffective."

"Or maybe it was _too_ effective," Trance interrupted. She glanced up at him to see a puzzled expression on his face. "See these wires?" she explained. "If I'm not mistaken, these are the improved networking connections you were boasting about. You've got too many. When the power generator started to overload, they started to siphon energy off just like they were supposed to, but they siphoned too much of it off right back into the teseract generator. We ended up with a power feedback loop that made a minor problem turn into a really big one."

Harper chuckled mirthlessly for a moment before saying, "Okay, you are _really_ starting to creep me out now."

She looked at him in confusion. "Why, am I not right?"

"Oh, you're right," he said, "but since when did you get so good with engineering stuff?"

"Well, apparently since I got stuck in your body," she replied. "And it's getting better – I mean, worse. I'm getting all kinds of ideas about how to build an entirely new teseract generator, and that is one thing I do _not_ want to know about."

"A new one, huh?" he asked, rubbing his hands together. "Do tell."

"No," she said shortly. "After we build one that is exactly the same as the one that got us into this mess, we are going to destroy it, and I will personally hunt you down if you try to build another one."

He held up his hands defensively. "Okay, okay," he said. "I'll give it up after this."

"Your word?" she prompted.

He nodded. "I promise."

"I'll hold you to that, Harper. Now come on, let's get this to Deedran and make sure we can build another one like it."

"And the sooner the better," he added under his breath as he started after her.


	12. Let the Game Begin

AN: Thanks again to everyone for their comments and reviews. Well, I have now come to the point of realizing that I have gotten my Trance/Harper plot somewhat ahead of my Dylan/Beka/Ree plot, so I'm going to do some catch up. The next two chapters will be on board the _Andromeda_ dealing with that plotline. For those of you who are reading only for the Trance stuff, sorry, you're gonna have to wait a couple more days. : )

**Chapter Twelve: Let the Game Begin**

"Check," Beka crowed happily for the third time in half an hour.

Dylan shook his head slowly as he studied the three-dimensional chess game board that rested on the glass coffee table between him and his first officer. "You are really starting to annoy me," he said good-naturedly. "Are you sure you're not cheating?"

"Hey, just because you're the Captain doesn't mean you can always win," she replied.

"I'm just wondering how you got to be so good. It's not like I see you playing it all that often."

She shrugged. "My dad taught it to me when I was still just a kid. Naturally, I hated to see my little horses get captured by my opponent, so I tended to be extremely patient in making a move, just to make sure they wouldn't get killed. Back then, it just meant that it took a really long time to beat me, but now that I'm older, I can add strategy to that patience, and as you're finding out the hard way, it pays off."

"Well, patience is definitely good," Dylan replied as he moved another piece to shield his king. "And it pays off in more ways than just this game."

"True," Beka replied as she considered her next move. "But sometimes," she picked up one of her knights and moved it forward, "I prefer the straightforward charge."

Dylan looked at her incredulously. "You do know what you just did, right?"

Beka suddenly looked ill. "What? What did I just do?"

The Captain smirked and moved a pawn to capture her knight. "That."

"Oh, that." She grinned in triumph. She brought a rook forward to face his king. "It's called a gambit, Captain. Checkmate."

Dylan groaned. "I think I'm going to have to get a new first officer," he muttered. "You're too devious for my likes."

"Come on, don't pout," she chuckled. "Losing every now and then just makes winning that much sweeter. Wanna go again?"

He leaned forward to start replacing his pieces, when the comfortable white lighting in his quarters suddenly changed to flashing blue.

"Battle stations," came Andromeda's voice over the comm. "Battle stations. All crew, report to battle stations. Captain to command. Battle stations."

"Looks like game time is over," Dylan commented wryly to Beka as they dashed out into the corridor.

* * *

"Andromeda, report," Dylan prompted as he arrived on the command deck.

"Captain, we're receiving coordinates for a hostile target located in an unidentified system approximately ten light years from our current location," Andromeda's holographic avatar said as she materialized next to him.

"Who's sending it to us?" he asked.

"I can't locate the source," she replied, "but the authorization is from High Guard Command. Code Alpha-Three-Strike-Strike-Omega."

"Oh, boy," he breathed.

"What? Does that mean something to you?" Beka asked.

Dylan barely spared her a glance as he stepped up to his command station. "It's an Omega directive," he explained as he started punching sequences into his console. "It means that an extremely dangerous and hostile target has been identified, and that it is to be completely destroyed at all costs." He looked up at her. "It usually means that we're going up against something big and ugly."

"You don't think it's the Magog worldship, do you?" she asked worriedly.

"No, it can't be," he replied. "It's too soon. It's got to be something else. Tyr, Rommie, report to command. Andromeda, any idea of what our target is?"

"Negative. The transmission indicates that target specs will be downloaded just before we drop back into real space."

"All right," Dylan said, more to himself than anyone. "We'll be going in blind. We'll just have to be ready for anything." He looked up as Tyr and Rommie arrived and moved to their respective stations. "Beka, you have the coordinates?'

"Got 'em."

"Take us to slipstream."

Beka punched in some commands, and the pilot's headrest slid up behind her as the slipstream console descended to just above her head. "All right, everyone, hold on to your pants. We're going in fast and hot."

"Captain," Rommie interrupted, "the _Eureka Maru_ has just launched from the main hangar bay. Ree is on board."

"What the –" Beka began as she paused the slipstream countdown. "She _stole_ my ship?"

"She _is_ your ship," Dylan muttered. "Andromeda, open a channel."

"Channel open."

"Ree, this is Captain Hunt. What are you doing?"

"Relax, Captain," Ree said as her face appeared on the main viewscreen. "I'm just getting ready for the battle." Her black eyes sparkled with an eerie glow in the flashing red warning lights in the _Maru's_ cockpit. "I'm sorry I didn't give you any warning."

"You had no authorization to launch," Dylan replied. "We're getting ready to jump to slipstream."

"Two ships are better than one," the red-haired android replied. "Besides, once we come out of slipstream on the other end, I wouldn't have any time to launch before the shooting starts."

"You know what we're going up against?" Beka put in.

"This is the mission I was telling you about, Captain," Ree replied, ignoring the other woman. "It's time to begin."

"Captain," Rommie interrupted, "I've managed to trace the signal of the Omega directive. It's coming from the _Maru_."

"Captain, we must leave _now_," Ree said.

"I don't think so," Dylan said angrily. "You're going to have to tell me more about what we're supposed to do before I'll just charge after you into who knows what."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," she answered. "We're out of time. Your ship has her orders, and you have yours." Her image fizzled out, and was replaced by a tactical readout of the space surrounding the _Andromeda_.

"She's preparing to go to slipstream," Rommie reported.

"Shall I blow her out of the sky?" Tyr asked hopefully.  
"Don't even think about it!" Beka retorted angrily. "That's _my_ ship!"

"Too late anyway," Rommie added. "She's gone."

"Beka, follow her," Dylan commanded. "I don't know what this mission of hers is, but we can't just let her take off. And I don't take orders from an android who's in command of a freighter."

"I'm on it," the first officer replied. "Going to slipstream!"

The viewscreens flared white and the deck started to vibrate as the cruiser accelerated. Moments later, the familiar view of the slipstream was before them.

"She's taking us by a circuitous route," Rommie said into the moment of silence that followed. "It's going to take us about three times as long to reach the target system than if we had just used a normal slip route."

"Probably because that was the route she was originally going to use three years ago," Dylan agreed. "Looks like it was designed to throw off any pursuit. How long will it take us to reach the system?"

"I estimate approximately two hours."

"Circuitous, huh?" Beka chimed in. "That's positively serpentine. I've done jumps that are longer, but not many. Tyr, if I start falling asleep, you'll have to throw something at me to keep me awake."

The Nietzschean shrugged. "If you say so."

Dylan ignored the banter between the other two as he examined the readouts on his console display. "Two hours," he muttered. "That's not much time, but it'll have to do."

"You have a plan, Dylan?" Rommie asked.

"Not yet, but I will," he replied. "And you're going to help me come up with it."


	13. The Game Continues

AN: This is the next chapter in my effort to catch up. Trance fans (and Harper fans!), rest assured, Chapter Fourteen will supply you with your fix for the day! On another note, my computer will be offline for about the next week, as it will be in various boxes getting shipped to my school. As soon as I am set up there, I'll be back on to get things rolling again. This will likely be my last post during that time. Thanks for your patience!

**Chapter Thirteen: The Game Continues**

"Dylan, before you start coming up with a plan," Rommie said as she followed Dylan into his quarters, "there's something else you should know."

Dylan turned to face her. "I don't like the sounds of that."

"I've been planning for a worst-case scenario, one where we might have to shoot at the _Maru_ to stop Ree from doing something stupid."

The Captain nodded. "I would expect nothing less."

"That's where the problem comes in," the android replied, crossing her arms over her chest. "My AI is refusing to accept firing solutions on the _Maru_. It seems that now Ree is in control of the freighter, Andromeda regards it as a fellow High Guard vessel. She won't engage in friendly fire without a good enough reason."

"I'd say firing on a target that may no longer be hostile three years after a mission was supposed to take it out would be a pretty good reason," Dylan argued. "Not to mention disobeying orders."

"That's just it, Dylan," Rommie said. "As far as Andromeda is concerned, Ree hasn't disobeyed any orders. Code Alpha-Three-Strike-Strike-Omega is a valid Omega Directive, and it was never officially rescinded, despite the mission's failure. And according to High Guard martial law, any ship that is in a position to aid the completion of an active Omega Directive _must_ do so."

"Well, that's just great!" Dylan exclaimed. "Some idiot bureaucrat on Terezed issued an Omega Directive, and then _forgot_ to deactivate it when the mission failed?" He threw up his hands in exasperation. "Wonderful!"

"Either they forgot, or they didn't want to bring attention to the fact that it had been activated in the first place by deactivating it. Omega Directives usually aren't popular in the realm of politics, let alone public opinion, especially if the target is controversial. You and I both know how difficult it is to recall a Directive once it's been issued. It's possible that whoever gave the order in the first place didn't want anyone else knowing about it once they heard the mission had failed."

"So they hoped it would just go away," Dylan finished. He put his hands on his hips and sighed. "That's just _great_." He was silent for a moment, lost in his thoughts. "If the target was that controversial," he went on finally, "I'm not so sure that I want to be the one responsible for blowing it up, especially three years after the order was given. Who knows what the situation is now? For all we know, it might be an ally of Terezed."

"So what do you suggest we do?" Rommie asked.

"We've got to stop Ree," he responded. "Preferably without killing her. But in order to do that, we need to figure out how to get Andromeda back on our side."

* * *

An hour and a half later, Dylan realized that his plan wasn't going to get any better than it already was. Rommie had offered a few pointers, but even with her android brain, she couldn't come up with anything better. Outsmarting herself, she commented dryly, was just something she didn't have to practice at very often.

Overall, Dylan felt it wasn't that bad of a strategy. But it all hinged on one thing, and it was something he _wasn't_ sure he could count on. It all depended on whether or not he could get Andromeda to back him on it.

As the minutes before their transition back to normal space slowly seeped away, Dylan checked in on the command deck to make sure everything was all right. Beka was focused on piloting the ship through the slipstream, and barely glanced over at him as he entered. He figured it was best not to disturb her.

"Tyr," he greeted the Nietzschean quietly, "are weapons primed and ready?"

"As they'll ever be," the other man returned levelly. "The _Andromeda_ is ready for a war, not to mention a battle."

Dylan nodded. "Good."

"There's just one thing," Tyr added as Dylan started to turn away.

Dylan glanced back at him. "I am really getting tired of 'just one more thing' today," he said in exasperation.

Tyr shrugged. "Yes. Well, it's not exactly making me jump for joy either. When we drop out of slipstream, I won't have any control over the weapons. Andromeda has locked me out of the system. It seems she doesn't want us to try and keep her from her little crusade."

Dylan nodded. "I expected that. Don't take it personally, Tyr. From her viewpoint, she's just following orders."

Tyr snorted. "And here I was beginning to _admire_ this ship for her sensibility."

Dylan didn't respond, but turned and left command.

Rommie was waiting for him as they started for one of the service corridors. "I wish Harper was here," she said as they walked. "I'm sure he could have come up with something that would make the success of your plan a bit more certain."

"I'm sure he could have," Dylan replied as they reached the door to one of the corridors. "But think about it; do you really want to hijack yourself?"

She arched an eyebrow. "I know myself, Dylan. And I know that simply taking control of my system would probably be the easiest way of doing things. And the safest."

Dylan hit the control panel next to the door and it slid open. "Well," he replied as he started to crawl inside, "I'd like to think that we can convince Andromeda to come around to our point of view the old fashioned way."

"And that way would be?" Rommie prompted as she followed him in.

"We're going to talk to her." He crawled until he reached one of the service ports, then moved aside so that Rommie could follow her in. "Andromeda?" he said.

The holographic avatar of the ship materialized in front of him. "If you're planning on hacking into my systems," she said, folding her arms over her chest, "don't. It'll get messy. I'm sorry, Captain, I really am, but an Omega Directive comes from a higher authority than you. I don't have a choice."

"I don't agree," Dylan said simply.

"Captain... Dylan, I'm not like Rommie. I'm just an AI program. When I'm given orders, I have to follow them. No matter how... misguided... they may be."

"You're not just an AI," Dylan protested. "You're more like Rommie than you know. Maybe you're not an android, and maybe you're more closely bound by so-called High Guard protocol than she is, but whether or not you're willing to admit it, you have gone far beyond your original programming."

"What are you saying?"

"What he's saying," Rommie interrupted, "is that you need to make a choice. You can't hide behind the excuse of following orders anymore. You can't afford to, not now."

"I'm not hiding behind _anything_," Andromeda argued. "I'm doing what I was _created_ to do."

"That may be true," Dylan answered. "But Rommie's right. We don't know what we're going up against here. If we just go in and blindly blast away, who knows what sort of catastrophe we're going to create? You're going to have to make a choice. Either follow your programming blindly, or use the skills you've learned from me and the rest of the crew to make a real decision. _Decide_ what you're going to do. Don't calculate it."

"And if I decide to go with my programming?"

Dylan was silent for a moment before sighing. "Well, then, we'll go from there." He stood slowly, but as he started to crawl down the corridor, he turned back to the hologram. "I trust that you'll do the right thing, Andromeda," he said. "Don't let me down."

Andromeda didn't answer, but instead vanished.

"Do you think she'll come around?" Rommie asked him as they arrived back at the main corridor.

Dylan shrugged. "I don't know. I guess we'll find out."

"And what if she decides to fulfill the Omega Directive and attacks a target that is no longer hostile?"

The Captain shook his head. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."


	14. Running Out of Time

AN: Thanks everyone for being so patient over this last week. I have finally gotten settled in at my school, and will be starting classes shortly. However, I should have plenty of time to do some writing on the side. As promised, here is the next chapter. It's a bit shorter than I thought it would be, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Thanks to everyone for their comments in my absence. They have been extremely helpful, as well as encouraging, and I will keep them in mind as I work on future Andromeda fanfics.

**Chapter Fourteen: Running Out of Time**

It was nearly half an hour before Professor Deedran showed up at the analysis laboratory where Harper and Trance were waiting. Apparently, he had decided to get some rest after bringing their meal, and he did not look very pleased at having been woken such a short time later. Harper had to work hard to keep from moaning in frustration when he saw the Assistant Professor following Deedran in.

"Harper, don't even think about it," Trance muttered to him. She raised her voice so the others could hear. "Thank you for joining us, Professor, Assistant Professor. I'm sorry we had to wake you."

Deedran waved off her apology good-naturedly. "Think nothing of it, Trance Gemini. I take it you have found something?"

She held out what was left of the photonic resonator. "The photonic resonator," she replied. "It wasn't inside the lab at all; it was blown through one of the windows by the force of the explosion."

Deedran gave it a cursory examination before handing it to his partner.

"Ohhhh," the Assistant Professor murmured. "_Very_ interesting. But, um, how will this help you? It's completely destroyed!"

Harper plucked it out of her hand. "Statements like that one are probably the reason you haven't yet achieved the title of super genius," he said wryly. "But thanks for the observation." He looked to Deedran. "I've – I mean, Trance – has already figured out at least one problem with it," he explained. "I gave it too many networking connections. It siphoned off too much extra energy right back into the generator. That's what caused the explosion in the first place."

"Mmm, I see," the Professor nodded. "So we'll need to correct that before building a new one."

"On the contrary," Trance interrupted. "If we fix that problem, it will be impossible for Harper and I to get back into our own bodies. Something that happened during the explosion was responsible for switching us in the first place. If we take away the explosion, it's very likely that any further experiments we do will have absolutely no effect."

"Which is bad," Harper translated. "The thing is, I don't think the explosion in and of itself is what made us trade bodies. We need to scan it and make sure nothing else is wrong with it. If there is, we'll need to duplicate that in any new ones we create, too."

Deedran nodded in understanding. "I have just the tool," he said as he led them to the far side of the lab. He moved to a computer screen and tapped in some commands. Next to him, a panel opened in the wall, and a large piece of equipment studded with lenses and multi-jointed arms slid out. "A beta ray scanner," he said proudly. "It is capable of scanning almost anything on a subatomic level. We'll be able to learn everything there is to know about your photonic resonator."

"Wonderful," Trance said. "How long will it take before we get any results?"

Deedran shook his head and shrugged. "Hmm, hard to say. It's highly experimental technology, developed by the late Technical Director Hohne. Your guess is as good as mine."

"Man, I hope it's not long," Harper complained, "'cause I am starting to get some really weird vibes going on with all this stuff running around inside my brain."

Trance smacked the back of his head. "Harper," she warned.

"What?" he protested. "I wasn't gonna say anything!"

"Just don't think about it."

"I'm doin' the best I can, ok?" He rubbed the back of his head ruefully. "Just hurry up, would ya, Prof?"

Deedran nodded and grinned. "As they say, I am on it!"

* * *

Harper was tired, but despite the fact that he was sitting on a large, very comfortable padded bench outside the analysis lab, he didn't feel like sleeping. Maybe it was just that his mind was tired, while Trance's body wasn't. Either way, he was too restless to even close his eyes for more than a few seconds at a time.

Next to him, Trance looked like one of the walking dead. Her face – _his_ face, he remembered with a grimace – was haggard and pale, and her eyes were half closed. She was dead tired, that much he could tell, but she was doing her best to stay awake.

"Hey," he said gently, just loud enough to get her attention. "Why don't you try to get some sleep? I'll wake you if Deedran comes up with anything."

She didn't look at him. "I can't," she replied, shaking her head. "I'm too restless."

He hesitated. "Are you scared?" he asked after a moment.

She glanced at him briefly, then looked away. "Yes," she admitted. "A little."

Harper tried to grin, but the effort was largely a failure. "Just a little?" he echoed.

For a long minute, she stared straight ahead, and he thought she wasn't going to answer. But then she looked at him. "Don't get me wrong, Harper," she said softly. "It's not that I think you're a bad person or anything, but I _really _don't want to be stuck in your place for the rest of my life. If I lose my identity, if I lose who I am, it will spell disaster for the future. And that is what is happening. Bit by bit, I'm beginning to forget things I could once recall in a second, and in their place I'm starting to find memories that are not my own." She hesitated and took a deep breath, and he thought she was going to cry. "Harper... I'm afraid that if I fall asleep... I won't be me anymore when I wake up."

He nodded, and he suddenly realized that he could understand what she was saying. He didn't want to lose who he was for the rest of his life, either. He watched as a single tear rolled down her cheek, and then, before he knew what he was doing, he put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. "Hey," he said soothingly, "it'll be all right. Don't worry. Deedran's going as fast as he can, and as soon as he's done, it shouldn't take us very long at all to get that new teseract generator up and running. Once we're through with that, we'll be back to ourselves in no time."

She didn't answer, but rested her chin on one of his arms.

"In the meantime," he went on, "we need to keep you from falling asleep. Talk to me about something."

"Like what?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Anything. I promise I won't tell anyone. About what you talk to me about, about your memories or your nightmares, about anything. You can tell me whatever you want."

She took a deep breath. "Anything, huh?" She grinned. "Well, there was this one time..."

* * *

They were still talking an hour later when Deedran finally called them back into the analysis lab.

"Well, there's good news and bad new," the Perseid told them. "The good news is that I think I've figured out what caused you to switch bodies. The bad news is that it's an impurity in one of the elements you used to construct the photonic resonator, Mr. Harper."

Harper sighed. "That's what I was afraid of. I'm sure I can replicate it, but it's going to take some time." He glanced over his shoulder at Trance, who looked like she was about to fall asleep on her feet, and lowered his voice as he looked back to the Professor. "Time that I'm not so sure we have."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Deedran asked.

Harper thought for a moment. "Actually, there just might be one thing you _can_ do. Any chance some of your science buddies are still interested in helping us out?"

Deedran nodded eagerly. "I'm positive they still are!"

"Good. Get them in here. You guys can start working on rebuilding the rest of the generator while Trance and I get the photonic resonator finished. I figure that'll save us an hour or two."

"I'll summon them right away!" The Professor suited action to words, and hurried out of the lab, leaving Harper and Trance with the Assistant Professor.

"I've taken the liberty to assemble the materials you'll need to build a new photonic resonator," she told Harper as she showed him what she had gathered. "I'll be happy to help you in any way I can!"

"Why, thank you," Harper said with exaggerated enthusiasm. "I may refrain from smacking you yet. Trance, let's get to work."

There was no response.

He turned to see Trance lying face down on the floor. He hurried over and knelt beside her. "She's out cold," he told the Assistant Professor. He tried to shake Trance, but there was no response.

"Is she unconscious?"

"She's asleep. But that could be worse than being unconscious right now." After several attempts, he managed to pick her up and carry her to one of the chairs. He set her down gently, then turned back to the waiting Perseid. "Come on, we don't have much time left. We've got to get this thing finished."


	15. The Power of Programming

AN: Greetings, everyone. I apologize for the amount of time it's taken me to get another post up. Unfortunately, while I am enjoying being at school, the move put me a bit behind on working on this story. However, here is the next post, and I am already working on the one that will come after it. Please enjoy.

**Chapter Fifteen: The Power of Programming**

"Dylan," Beka's voice came over the comm. "We'll be dropping back into normal space in five minutes. You might want to come to command."

"I'm on my way," he replied. With Rommie in tow, he picked up the pace, and jogged most of the way back to the command deck. "Have we received the specs on our target yet?" he asked when he arrived.

"They're coming in now," Tyr replied from weapons control. He raised an eyebrow as he scanned the data rolling across his screens. "It seems that all of your planning may prove to be unnecessary, Dylan," he said.

Dylan gave him a questioning look.

"Our target," the Nietzschean explained, "is a Drago-Katsov weapons station. It serves as the central control system for an entire asteroid belt full of missile platforms and mine fields. According to our scans, it's less than seven light years out from Terezed."

"Well, that explains why they wanted it taken out in the first place," Dylan put in.

"But not why they wanted the existence of the Omega Directive that was supposed to take it out left unknown," Rommie finished. "Maybe it's just me and my warship's way of thinking, but I'm starting to get some bad vibes here."

"Yes, this is definitely beginning to feel a bit fishy," Dylan agreed. "Tyr, have you been able to convince Andromeda to give you back fire control?"

"No," the other man replied simply. "I've done everything except get on my knees and beg. She's ignoring me with a stubbornness that I almost – _almost_ – find admirable. If it weren't for our current situation, I would applaud her. But right now, I simply want to –"

"Thank you, Tyr," Dylan put in quickly. "I think we all get the idea."

"Ok, guys, hold on," Beka interrupted. "Transiting back to normal space in three, two, one... now!"

Dylan got a firm grip on his command station as the ship started shaking around him. Once again, the viewscreens flashed white, and when they cleared, the starscape of normal space was before them.

"Anything on sensors, Rommie?" Dylan asked.

The android was silent for a moment as she studied the sensor readouts. "The _Eureka_ _Maru_ is still ahead of us, approximately three light seconds out. All of her weapons systems are armed, and she's proceeding at maximum speed."

"And our target?"

She shook her head. "All I'm seeing is the marker that Ree loaded into our targeting systems. We're still too far out to see anything with normal scanners."

"And I've just lost engine control," Beka chimed in. "Looks like now that Andromeda doesn't need me to guide her through slipstream, she's decided to fly herself."

"Great," Dylan muttered. "Rommie, launch a full spread of sensor drones. Let's see what we can see."

"Launching. They'll be in position in thirty seconds."

"Let me know when we start getting a feed. Distance to target?"

"Just under one light minute. We'll be in combat range in about ten minutes."

"Well, if no one has any objections," Tyr started, "I'll be in my quarters. It seems that Andromeda has everything well in hand. I'm wasting my time standing here."

"I _do_ object, Tyr," Dylan replied. "We might still need you before this is all over."

The Nietzschean smirked. "Do you _really_ think that this ship will decide to go against her programming and return control to us, Dylan?" he asked in a mocking voice. "She's a _machine_. She has made her will known, and since you are so loath to start forcefully rearranging her systems, there is nothing we can do to change that. Besides, it's a Dragan target; shoot first and ask questions later would be the preferred protocol, if you ask me."

"I'm not asking for you opinion, Tyr," Dylan ground out softly. "But I am _ordering_ you to man your station until I dismiss you. Is that clear?"

Tyr looked like he was going to argue, but instead, he tilted his head to one side and gave a little grin. "Perfectly," he murmured, his eyes never leaving Dylan's.

"Dylan," Rommie interrupted. "We're receiving the feed from the sensor drones. Target specs are coming up on the screens."

Dylan watched as a blue computerized image of an asteroid appeared on the main viewscreen, while real life images of the same target materialized on the secondary viewers. Moments later, black spots in the rough shape of craters started dotting the computer image as the drones downloaded more data.

"What exactly are we seeing here?" he asked.

With a suddenness that startled them all, _Andromeda's_ AI appeared on one of the secondary viewers. "This is the asteroid on which the missile command center is supposed to be based," she answered. "But it's showing signs of devastating battle damage." Her eyes narrowed. "Captain, I believe the target has already been destroyed."

"Looks like somebody beat us to it," Tyr said, the disappointment evident in his voice.

"The damage is approximately three years old," Andromeda continued. "The signatures of the weapons that were used are consistent with High Guard heavy yield offensive missiles."

"The kind that come standard on a _Golden Dawn_-class frigate," Dylan put in. "The _Valkyrie_ already destroyed this target. She just doesn't remember it."

"Oh, she remembers it," Rommie added suddenly. "The _Maru_ is vectoring away from the asteroid and is headed for a cluster of new targets that has just shown up on my screen. Their energy signatures are consistent with Drago-Katsov facilities."

"She's not here to _start_ a battle," Dylan exclaimed, "she's here to finish it!"

"Adjusting course to match," Andromeda stated.

"Andromeda, you're not still serious about helping her on this one, are you?" Dylan asked in disbelief. "If we start attacking these targets, we'll bring the whole Dragan fleet down on top of us, not to mention the nearby Terezed system. You'll start a war!"

"I'm sorry, Captain, but I have my orders. The Omega Directive states that the entire installation must be wiped out."

"Dylan, I'm getting more information on the destroyed target," Rommie put in before Dylan could answer. "I don't think it was a missile command center at all. An analysis of the debris left on the asteroid shows that the materials used are not consistent with military grade construction." She looked up at the Captain, a surprised look on her face. "The target may have been Drago-Katsov, but it was also civilian."

"That's what I was afraid of," Dylan muttered to himself.

"Whoa, whoa, hold on a second!" Beka exclaimed. "You mean to tell me that the government on Terezed issued an Omega Directive against a _civilian_ target?"

"That seems to be the case," Rommie replied.

"And they wouldn't be the first," Tyr replied.

Dylan turned to look at him. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Tyr looked at him as if it were obvious. "Well, Nietzscheans have been destroying civilian targets belonging to rival prides for centuries. But even before they turned on one another during the Nietzschean Tactical Offensive, it was not unheard of for Commonwealth battle groups to drop out of slipstream, annihilate a civilian drift or mining colony, and then disappear just as quickly when they realized they'd hit the wrong target."

"Bad intel," Dylan finished. "Commonwealth vessels never attacked civilian targets unless it was by accident – unless they'd been given bad intelligence."

"Are you saying the _Valkyrie Hammer_ was given an Omega Directive on a Drago-Katsov civilian installation because the government on Terezed made a mistake?" Beka asked.

"More than that," Dylan continued. "I'm saying that the government on Terezed made a mistake, called the _Valkyrie_ off, and then tried to destroy her to hide the evidence of their blunder. _They're_ the ones who boarded her all those years ago. They wiped her memory and killed her crew so that no one would ever know what they'd done."

"And now Ree is hoping to finish her mission," Rommie put in. "And she's about ready to start on that. She'll be in weapons range in two minutes."

"Any idea of what the new targets that she's heading for are?" Dylan asked.

"There are six different structures on four different asteroids," Andromeda interrupted before Rommie could answer. "They're showing the same type of construction as the installation that was destroyed. I'm seeing medium-sized generators, living quarters, basic laboratories, astronomical observation platforms..." She paused. "It looks like an educational facility."

Dylan exhaled slowly, and he suddenly looked old and tired. "The _Valkyrie Hammer_ was ordered to destroy a school," he said softly. He looked up to where Andromeda was watching him from one of the secondary viewscreens. "Andromeda, you have got to help us stop Ree before it's too late. I know she's only following orders, but those orders were, and still are, _wrong._ A mistake was made three years ago, and blowing this place into space dust isn't going to change that."

"Captain, I –"

"It's a _school_, Andromeda," Dylan said firmly. His voice was level, but there was no mistaking the tone of conviction in it. "There are children down there. People who have done nothing to deserve an Omega Directive issued against them. Help us stop Ree before more mistakes are made."

Andromeda was silent for a long moment, her brown eyes unblinking as she regarded Dylan. When she spoke, it was so sudden that it almost made him jump. "Restoring control of critical systems to the command crew," she said. "Captain, we may not be able to make a wrong into a right, but we can stop it from getting any worse. Let's go get her."

Dylan nodded. "Thank you, Andromeda." He looked to the rest of his crew. "Tyr, bring all offensive batteries online. Beka, full speed ahead; drop us in on the _Maru's_ tail. Let's bring it, people!"

"You're not actually going to shoot at her, are you?" Beka asked. "She's in _my_ ship!"

"Not unless I have no other options," Dylan replied. "Rommie, open a channel to the _Maru_. I think it's time Ree learned where we stand on this matter."

"Channel open."

"Ree, this is Captain Hunt. I am _ordering_ you to stand down your attack on this installation, effective immediately. Power down your weapons and your engines, and prepare to be taken back onboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_. Respond."

The image of Ree's face appeared on the main viewscreen. "I thought we'd been through this already, Captain," she said. "There is an active Omega Directive against this target, and my orders are to destroy it. Your orders are meaningless; an Omega Directive outranks –"

"Yes, I know," Dylan returned heatedly. "But just in case you haven't already figured this out, your 'hostile' target is a school. And your almighty Omega Directive is a mistake that was made three years ago. A mistake so monumental that your own people tried to destroy you so that they could cover it up."

"That is irrelevant, Captain," the avatar returned. "I have my orders, and mistake or no, they still stand. _Andromeda Ascendant_, you will fire at these coordinates on my mark."

"I'm sorry, Ree," Andromeda replied. "But unlike you, I don't think innocent lives are irrelevant. I have returned control of myself to the Captain. Please, stand down, or I will be forced to attack you."

Ree hissed in anger, her black eyes flashing with dark anger. "As soon as I'm done with the Nietzschean rodents, I'll come back for you, traitor!" She lashed out with a fist, and the screen fizzled into static.

"Hey, easy on the gear!" Beka exclaimed. "That's _my_ ship!"

"If we're going to stop her, we have to act now," Rommie interrupted. "She's fifteen seconds from reaching maximum effective missile range."

"All missile batteries are primed and ready," Tyr said, his finger literally poised over the button.

"Andromeda, prepare to issue a change in chain of command sequence, as well as High Guard fleet formation orders," Dylan snapped.

"Sir?"

"Your programming almost got the better of you," he replied. "Now we're going to use it to trick her."

"Issuing change in chain of command sequence. The _Valkyrie Hammer_ is acknowledging. The _Andromeda Ascendant_ is now the flagship of High Guard Battle Group One-One-Alpha. What fleet formation do you wish to use?"

"Just give me the standard follow-the-leader stuff," Dylan ordered. "Beka, hard one-eighty. Get us out of this system."

"Order issued."

"Coming about."

"Dylan!" Rommie exclaimed. "The _Eureka Maru_ is firing. She's launched a full spread at the main facility on the first asteroid."

"Tyr! Switch to defensive missiles! Shoot them down!"

"Switching!"

"We're too late, Captain," Andromeda reported. "Her missiles are already out of range. However..." She paused for a moment, then smiled. "It seems that our tactics confused her for just long enough. She launched her missiles too late. They're detonating in open space."

Dylan heaved a sigh of relief. "And the _Maru_?"

"Following us out of the system, astern and starboard."

The Captain wiped sweat from his forehead with one hand. "Send out some retrieval drones to bring her in. Good work everyone."

"Well," Tyr said slowly as he deactivated the missile batteries, "it looks like your plan worked after all, Dylan. How did you know that Andromeda would side with us?"

"I didn't," he replied. "All I could do was trust that she would make the right decision, before it was too late."

The Nietzschean crossed his arms. "Don't you think that was a bit risky, considering the stakes involved?"

"Maybe," Dylan answered. "But then, what good is faith in your friends, if you already know everything?" He glanced over his shoulder at Andromeda's image on the screen and smiled.

Andromeda smiled back.

* * *

AN: Well, that's the conclusion of one plotline. But make sure and keep an eye out for the Harper/Trance plot conclusion, as well as the "resolution" posts for the both of them.


	16. Going Out With a Bang

AN: At long last, here is the last part of the Harper/Trance plotline. I really appreciate everyone's patience on this. However, this is not the last chapter of the story. There will be at least one more, and in it, we will see some of the insights and reflections of the various characters involved. After all, we want to see if Harper's learned any lessons, right?

**Chapter Sixteen: Going Out With a Bang**

"Man, I don't know which nightmare she's going through this time," Harper muttered to the Assistant Professor who stood next to him, "but it must be one of my worst ones. And she's not waking up, either."

He tried hard to concentrate on the last few stages of rebuilding the photonic resonator, but it was growing increasingly difficult. Behind him, Trance was tossing and turning in her chair, crying out in her sleep as she fought off imaginary attackers. Harper was beginning to figure out which dream it was, and it brought back _very_ unpleasant memories. But at least those memories were still his own. That was his second problem. As time went on, he quickly realized that he could remember less and less of his own life, while more and more information about Trance tried to push itself into his consciousness. Only sheer force of will was allowing him to ignore them and retain just enough of his own knowledge to finish his work on the resonator.

"Just hold on a little bit longer, Trance," he whispered. He glanced up just long enough to accept another component from the Assistant Professor, then bent to his work again. "How are those lab rats coming with the generator?" he asked.

The female Perseid regarded him in confusion for a moment, then nodded. "Ah, you mean Professor Deedran and the other scientists. I would imagine that they are slightly further along in the process than when you asked two minutes ago. I could go check again, if you wish."

Harper didn't look up. "Please do," he replied. As she exited the lab through the door behind him, he breathed a little sigh of relief. He was nearly done, but this last part was the most delicate, and having her staring over his shoulder was starting to get on his nerves. Especially since she was constantly muttering to herself, repeatedly going over the various steps he was using to rebuild the resonator. It was like she was trying to memorize the process – all while breathing down his neck. A Human probably wouldn't have noticed it, but Trance's body was able to pick up even the slightest air movements, which could get annoying fast.

He realized that he had stopped working and was staring off into space. He shook himself, and glanced back down at the component in his hand. He had to keep his concentration, just a bit longer. Placing the tip of his miniature arc welder at the appropriate spot, he turned the power back on.

* * *

Some time later – he wasn't sure if it was minutes or hours – he realized that the Assistant Professor was standing next to him again.

"Professor Deedran says that he has finished rebuilding the generator," she said, making him stir as if coming out of a trance. "Are you done? You've been staring at it for the past five minutes."

He shrugged. "Uh, yeah, I think so." Even as he said it, he wondered if he really was or not. Suddenly, he couldn't remember which step of the process he had been on. "Well, I mean, it looks pretty good, don't you think?"

She nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes, indeed! If you are finished then, I believe it's about time to get this procedure started. I'll help you get Trance Gemini."

Making sure that the photonic resonator was secure in a padded case he took from one of the lab's many shelves, Harper tucked it under one arm, then knelt next to Trance. "Trance," he whispered. "Trance, it's time to wake up. Come on, just for a couple minutes. I promise you can go back to sleep just as soon as we're done."

To his surprise, she opened her eyes slowly. He helped her sit up. "I need a Sparky Cola," she muttered groggily.

"You can have my entire stash once we get back to the Andromeda," he replied. "Just do your best to stay awake for a bit longer." He helped her stand up, then brought her over to lean on the Assistant Professor's shoulder. "Help her back to the lab," he told the Perseid. "I'm going to get the resonator installed."

She nodded, staggering a bit as Trance all but fell into her. "I'm right behind you," she replied, trying to sound enthusiastic.

Leaving the two of them behind, Harper exited the analysis lab and hurried toward the room where Deedran and the other scientists were waiting. It only took him a few minutes to get there, but they were some of the longest minutes of his life. The entire way, he had to struggle to keep his focus. He continually ran over the process of installing the resonator in his mind, because he knew that if he stopped, he would forget it for good. Memories that had to be from Trance's childhood – or whatever she could call the first few years of her life – were doing their best to take over, and not all of them were exactly pleasant.

Finally, he reached the lab where this entire fiasco had started. "I've got the resonator," he said quickly as he picked his way over the debris from the first explosion. "Deedran, give me a hand with installing it. The rest of you, make sure everything's connected properly, then get as far away from this room as you can."

For once, the Perseids didn't argue or gawk. Within seconds, they were scrambling around like a miniature horde of blue ants.

The Assistant Professor arrived with Trance just as the rest of the scientists hurried out of the room. Deedran moved to help her.

"I believe we're ready," he told Harper as he went. "Everything is in precisely the same configuration as it was the first time. Provided that you've rebuilt the photonic resonator correctly, I estimate a... twenty-two percent chance of success. I'm afraid they're not very good odds, considering that you could be blown apart in the process."

"Don't think so negatively," Harper admonished, realizing even as he did that he sounded far too much like Trance for his liking. He made the last connection between the photonic resonator and the teseract generator. "I'm well aware that we've only got one shot at this. If we make a mistake, Trance and I are both dead, or if not, we might as well be." With a sigh of exasperation, he stepped over to help the two Perseids with Trance. She was being entirely uncooperative, which was likely due to the fact that she seemed to be mostly asleep again. "Come on, Trance," he coaxed. "We're almost there."

With Deedran's help, he finally got her seated on the floor next to the table that supported the teseract generator. He had to prop her against one of the legs so that she wouldn't fall over. He straightened to see the other two looking at him.

"Well, Prof," he said, "it hasn't been real fun, but it certainly has been _real_. Thanks for all your help."

The Professor gave a single nod. "It has been most exciting, Mr. Harper. It is a real honor to have worked with you."

"Who knows?" Harper added, giving a small smile at the Assistant Professor. "If you keep it up, you just might attain super genius level sooner than you think."

"It has been a pleasure," she replied with a toothy grin.

"Right, well, I'd get out of here if I were you too," he said. "It's gonna get really nasty in here really quick."

They turned and started to leave, but at the doorway, Deedran turned back. "Oh, Mr. Harper!" he piped.

"What?" Harper asked in exasperation.

"Good luck!"

* * *

"Harper, hurry."

Harper looked down in surprise from where he was making one last check on the teseract generator's networking converters. "Trance, you're awake."

"Barely," she replied softly. "I'm sorry I haven't been of more help to you. Your memories are so strong... so terrible. If I stay conscious for too long, they start to take over."

"You mean you deliberately went to sleep?" he asked as he crouched beside her.

She shook her head. "It wasn't sleep. I put myself into a sort of trance, where I was aware of my surroundings, but detached from my mind, so that your memories couldn't start dictating my actions. But I can't hold it much longer."

"Well, don't worry about it," he assured her. "Everything is set. I'm ready if you are."

She nodded weakly.

"We're only going to get once chance at this, you know," he added. "We're just as likely to be killed as we are to be returned to our own bodies."

"I know. We don't have a choice. Do it."

He nodded. "All right. Here goes something... I hope." He reached up and started the power up sequence. The teseract generator began to hum as energy started to flow through it. Once he was sure that he wouldn't need to do anything more, Harper sat down on the floor next to Trance, and wrapped his arms around her. "It'll be over any second now, one way or another."

Above him, the teseract generator started to whine, then rattle.

Trance didn't respond, but instead stared out the shattered windows at the sky beyond. "The night is almost gone," she whispered. "The sun is rising."

In the next room, the new power generator started making rhythmic thumps. Just like last time.

Harper felt himself gripping Trance tighter. "So far so good," he said, trying to sound reassuring. He wasn't sure who he was trying to comfort, her or himself.

She didn't say anything, but she did put her arms around him.

Sparks flew from the teseract generator above them. He felt a few land on his neck, but he ignored the slight burning sensation. A low boom echoed from the next room. A brilliant white light started to fill the room, and the teseract generator's whine rose to a howl. The light grew until Harper had to squeeze his eyes shut.

"Here we go!" he shouted over the crescendo.

The power generator exploded, filling the room with smoke and fire. The teseract machine tore itself to shreds, sending out a spherical bubble of blue and white energy that enveloped them in its wake.

Harper heard his shout turn into a scream of agony, and next to him, he knew Trance was screaming just as loud. He felt his skin start to burn, and he suddenly realized that he was flying through the air like a discarded piece of flexi. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Trance – in his body – sailing past him, moving as if time had slowed to a near standstill. Her mouth was open in a cry that echoed in his mind.

The entire room was filled with flame and blossoming explosions. It felt like he was disintegrating.

Just when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, he saw his body slam into the far wall, and blackness took him.

* * *

Smoke. Smoke filled the room with a thick curtain of black, and pieces of burning hot debris were still falling like raindrops of fire. It was the first thing that Trance noticed as she felt her consciousness rushing back with a rapidity that was painful. She opened her eyes slowly, and realized that she couldn't see more than a few feet in any direction for all the smoke. She sat up with a groan...

And realized that it was her voice that made the sound. She brought a hand up; it was hers. She grinned. Harper had done it! They were back in their own bodies! But her jubilation died quickly. Harper.

Where was he?

She stood, ignoring the pain that shot through her legs as she did so, trying to catch sight of her friend amidst the destruction around her. She couldn't see anything except smoke and the jagged edges of metal and concrete. This explosion had been bigger than the last.

"Harper!" she called. "Harper! Where are you?"

There was no answer.

At that moment, she felt a breeze rush through the room; the clouds of smoke parted slightly, and golden rays from the rising sun slashed through with a brilliance that made her shield her eyes. They fell on the still form of Harper, against the far wall.

"Harper!" she cried, rushing toward him. She tripped on a piece of debris and fell to her knees. She crawled. "Harper!"

She finally reached him, and hesitated, wondering if she should touch him. Fighting back tears of concern, she reached out and cradled him in her arms, wiping streaks of soot from his face with one hand. "Harper?" she asked pleadingly.

He coughed, then groaned. "What the –" he started weakly. He blinked, then focused on her. "Trance?" His eyes widened when he saw her. "Trance! It worked?"

Trance didn't bother holding back her tears now. She let them slide down her cheeks as she held her friend, breathing a sigh of relief. "Yes, it worked, Harper. We're back in our own bodies. Our memories are our own." She smiled. "You did it."

Harper grinned up at her. "Hey what did I tell you? Trust the Harper..."

She returned his grin. "The Harper is good," she finished.


	17. The Most Important Question

AN: Well, folks, this is finally it, the end of my first Andromeda fanfiction. A big thanks to all of those that took the time to read it and comment on it. I found them really helpful. I really enjoyed this story, and I think it helped me to come to love Andromeda even more than I did at the beginning. I went into it with the knowledge of only part of S2, and have come out of it having seen all the way through the first part of S4. Just writing this helped me explore some of the detail and adventure that makes Andromeda so great. I hope you find this a great last chapter, and thanks for reading and enjoying. As always, comments are welcome. Guess I'll see you the next time Inspiration comes knocking.

**Chapter Seventeen: The Most Important Question**

The holding cell was mostly dark, lit only by a thin halo of blue security lighting that ran around the walls just below the ceiling. The black eyes of the android within glittered eerily as they blinked, regarding the two that stood just beyond the door.

"What will you do with me now, Captain?" Ree asked. Her voice was soft, no longer angry or threatening. Dylan almost thought it sounded sad.

He sighed. "We're going to take you back to Terezed and turn you over to the government there," he replied slowly. "Some people probably won't be too happy to see you coming back in one piece, but once the story of what happened gets out, they won't dare hurt you. Fully functional High Guard avatars are rare these days; you'll be put to good use."

Ree stood and came forward, so fast that Dylan took an involuntary step backward. She gripped the bars on the door as she looked out at him. "They'll wipe my memory, Captain! You can't let them do that to me!"

"I won't," he assured her.

"I was just following my programming," she went on.

"Which is why Dylan won't let anything happen to you," Rommie interjected. "You've learned a valuable lesson. If they erase your memory, you'll just have to learn it all over again. Our programming is there to guide us, not rule us. We can't let it turn us into mindless automatons. If we do, we're just machines, and we're not to be trusted... ever."

Ree nodded, but she still didn't look happy. "I suppose it's more than I deserve," she said. "In hindsight, I can't believe I was actually going to go through with those orders. Especially once I found out what the target was." She looked to Dylan. "I owe you thanks for stopping me."

Dylan shook his head. "It's not me you should be thanking. It's Andromeda. She's the one who decided to disobey orders and do the right thing instead."

"She went against her programming," Ree stated.

He nodded. "Yes, she did. She's proof that an AI can go above and beyond the rules, and think for herself. Sometimes, you have to do away with logic, and go with your heart."

"But I'm an android. How can I have a heart?"

Dylan glanced at the android standing next to him and patted her on the shoulder. "That's something you'll have to talk to Rommie here about." He paused, regarding Rommie for a moment as if he was going to say something more of the matter, then continued. "If you'll excuse me, I need to contact Terezed and get things lined out for your transfer to their control." He turned and started down the corridor, but stopped. "Oh, and Ree," he said over his shoulder, "in the future, good luck."

* * *

Dylan leaned back in the chair behind his desk, folding his hands in front of him as he waited for Andromeda to establish a channel with the government on Terezed. Moments later, he was through, and the fun began.

He started out with a low-level diplomat, but as soon as he mentioned the _Valkyrie Hammer_, he was quickly transferred up the chain of command, until he found himself speaking with Telemichus Rhade himself, the man in charge of Terezed's military.

"I'm familiar with the _Valkyrie Hammer_ operation, Captain," Rhade said when Dylan explained yet again why he was establishing the communication. "It was launched by my predecessor. It has become known in our military history books as one of the most spectacular failures ever suffered by Terezed's High Guard."

"Then you're aware of the Omega Directive that was behind it," Dylan responded, "the Directive that was still active as of a day ago."

To his surprise, the Nietzschean looked genuinely shocked. "No, I wasn't," he replied, "at least, not that it was still active. The reports that I received said the mission had failed. The _Hammer_ was destroyed with all hands still on board, and the Directive was recalled. That was the official line I was given, at any rate. I was not the one in charge at that time, of course."

"No, of course not," Dylan repeated slowly. "It seems like I wasn't the only one fooled, then," he continued. "Your predecessor tried to cover up his mistake by destroying the ship himself. But he failed to kill the one thing he needed to the most – the _Valkyrie's_ avatar. We have her with us now, and we'd like to return her to you."

Rhade nodded. "Thank you, Captain. She'll be interrogated immediately, and then we'll wipe her memory."

Dylan grimaced. "I'd rather you didn't do that, Admiral," he replied. "Ree has a lot of experience. She managed to survive on her own for three years, with no crew, no functioning ship, and no power source. She's learned valuable lessons. She was already betrayed by her own people once; don't do it to her again."

Rhade was silent for a long moment, then gave a curt nod. "Very well, Captain. Perhaps you're right. She can be of great use to us as she is now. I'll see to it that she's treated accordingly. You have my word on it."

Dylan returned the nod. "Thank you, Admiral. We'll be there in about two days."

"We'll have everything ready for you." Rhade snapped a salute. "As always, Captain, it's been a pleasure."

Dylan saluted back. "Likewise. _Andromeda Ascendant_ out."

No sooner had he breathed a sigh of relief than Andromeda's voice came over the comm. "Captain, a Perseid vessel just reverted from slipstream and is hailing us. It looks like Harper and Trance have returned." Her voice took on a slightly surprised note. "And they're both in one piece, it seems."

Dylan grinned. "I told you Harper had learned his lesson, Andromeda." He rose and started for the door. "He promised me before he left that he wouldn't do anything stupid. Looks like he meant it for once."

* * *

The Captain could feel his grin quickly slipping away as Harper related to him the story of what had happened on Sinti. Trance had promptly vanished just after arriving on the _Andromeda_, which left a very hesitant Harper to explain the details of their little debacle.

"It was probably the freakiest thing I've ever experience," the engineer said. "It was like I was me, but looking at myself at the same time. I could see how others saw me, feel me like other felt me..." He hesitated, trying to find the right words to describe it. Finally, he gave up. "You know what I mean?"

Dylan shook his head slowly. "No, not really, Harper. But I'm sure it must have been something."

Harper nodded, but his gaze was fixed on the wide swath of stars that floated beyond the observations deck. For a long moment, he simply stared at them. It seemed to Dylan that it was almost as if he were remembering something. "Yeah, it was something," he said, so softly that it was almost a whisper. "I don't know, it just... Despite the fact that we almost got killed, _twice_, and that we almost lost ourselves in each other's memories... I wouldn't trade it for the world, Dylan. I learned a lot about Trance, and I think she learned something about me."

"Well, something good did come of it, then," Dylan replied.

Harper chuckled for a moment. "I just wish we could have gone about it in a less stressful way." His laughter died, and once again he stared at the stars. "You know, ever since Trance left... I mean, ever since she grew up, I haven't really trusted her. She just disappeared, left me behind without saying goodbye, and sent someone else I didn't know to take her place." He turned away from the swirling constellations beyond the _Andromeda_, and looked Dylan in the eye. "Don't ever make the same mistake I did. Don't ever _not_ trust her."

"What do you mean?"

"I promised her I wouldn't say anything about what I experienced while in her body," he started to explain, "but I will say this: I could see her thoughts, experience her memories, feel her emotions. She's as loyal as they come, Dylan. We're her _friends_, and no matter what her agenda really is, this is her home. She would never, _ever_, betray us. We matter more to her than anything else. She is more worthy of your trust than any of the rest of us. Far more."

Dylan didn't respond for a moment, and when he did, it was simply to put a hand on Harper's shoulder before letting him go.

When the engineer was gone, the Captain stood alone on the observation deck, gazing out at the galaxy beyond. Stars. Millions of them. And between them all, trillions of lives, going about their business, most of them wondering why they were there.

But that wasn't really the important question. The question was one that Andromeda had been forced to face. The one that Ree would continue to struggle with for some time. The one that Harper, and perhaps even Trance, had found the answer to.

"Who are we?" Dylan muttered to himself. "Who am I?"

Realizing that he, too, would have to answer that one day, he turned and walked away, leaving the galaxy, and all its questions, behind him.

**The End**


End file.
